Researchers from the Department of Paediatrics and Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging at the University of Oxford, UK, have identified the neural network that helps control babies’ brain activity in response to pain in a similar way to adults.
Researchers from the Department of Paediatrics and Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging at the University of Oxford, UK, have identified the neural network that helps control babies’ brain activity in response to pain in a similar way to adults.
Their findings build on their previous study from 2015, which revealed that newborns experience pain like adults. Both papers are published in the journal eLife.
“In our previous work, we used an imaging technique called functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, or fMRI, to show that pain-related brain activity in newborn infants is similar to that observed in adults,” says senior author Rebeccah Slater, Professor of Paediatric Neuroscience at the University of Oxford. “We wanted to expand on this by investigating whether the functional network connectivity strength across the descending pain modulatory system – DPMS – in infants influences the magnitude of this brain activity.”
The DPMS is a network of brain regions which function together to regulate both sensory input to the central nervous system and behavioural responses to pain. To study the network’s influence on babies’ brain activity in response to pain, Slater and her team analysed fMRI data from 13 newborns, who were on average four days old and had been recruited from the Maternity Unit at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford.
Read more at eLife
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