Open Collections

Archibald Orozco, Jessica

University of British Columbia

According to international human rights, it is necessary for countries to provide pain management strategies¹. Today the average wait time for treatment at publicly funded pain clinics in Canada is 1-3 years. The lack of diagnostic methods to test treatment efficacy are major factors contributing to this delay in care. The role of the brain in processing pain has been extensively investigated using various functional imaging techniques coupled with well controlled noxious stimuli. Studies applying experimental pain have also used proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (¹H-MRS). The advantage of MRS compared to other techniques is the capacity to non-invasively examine metabolites involved in the neurotransmission of pain, including glutamate, the primary excitatory neurotransmitter. The aim of this work is to characterize the neurochemical patterns of the brain in relation to experimental pain while incorporating additional neurophysiological techniques (i.e., perfusion and electrical activity measurements). Experiments in this thesis range from examining brain responses during an in-scanner pain model, after multiple days of painful stimulation, to spatially mapping the cingulate cortex at rest in relation to pain sensitivity outcomes. These studies were performed all while implementing the recent consensus recommendations of MRS data acquisition and analysis. Subsequent analysis examined sex-differences to gain a more thorough understanding of how these affect the neurotransmitter systems, contribute to pain, and could provide novel avenues for sex-specific treatments. By investigating the pattern and specificity of neurotransmitter changes in relation to pain, these findings shed new insights into MRS application in pain in improving our understanding of pain physiology. More broadly, this work provides insight into the biochemical processes in the healthy brain, which can serve as a foundation for understanding neurological diseases.

Text

2023-04-19

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/84319

Experimental Medicine

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/