The brain circuitry underlying the temporal evolution of nausea in humans.

Nausea is a universal human experience. It evolves slowly over time, and brain mechanisms underlying this evolution are not well understood. Our functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) approach evaluated brain activity contributing to and arising from increasing motion sickness.

Static and dynamic autonomic response with increasing nausea perception.

Background: Nausea is a commonly occurring symptom typified by epigastric discomfort with urge to vomit. The relationship between autonomic nervous system (ANS) outflow and increasing nausea perception is not fully understood.

Methods: Our study employed a nauseogenic visual stimulus (horizontally translating stripes) while 17 female subjects freely rated transitions in nausea level and autonomic outflow was measured (heart rate, HR; heart rate variability, HRV; skin conductance response, SCR; respiratory rate).

Intrinsic brain connectivity in fibromyalgia is associated with chronic pain intensity.

Objective: Fibromyalgia (FM) is considered to be the prototypical central chronic pain syndrome and is associated with widespread pain that fluctuates spontaneously. Multiple studies have demonstrated altered brain activity in these patients. The objective of this study was to investigate the degree of connectivity between multiple brain networks in patients with FM, as well as how activity in these networks correlates with the level of spontaneous pain.

Monitoring acupuncture effects on human brain by FMRI.

Functional MRI is used to study the effects of acupuncture on the BOLD response and the functional connectivity of the human brain. Results demonstrate that acupuncture mobilizes a limbic-paralimbic-neocortical network and its anti-correlated sensorimotor/paralimbic network at multiple levels of the brain and that the hemodynamic response is influenced by the psychophysical response. Physiological monitoring may be performed to explore the peripheral response of the autonomic nerve function.

Brain encoding of acupuncture sensation--coupling on-line rating with fMRI.

Acupuncture-induced sensations have historically been associated with clinical efficacy. These sensations are atypical, arising from sub-dermal receptors, and their neural encoding is not well known. In this fMRI study, subjects were stimulated at acupoint PC-6, while rating sensation with a custom-built, MR-compatible potentiometer.