Functional activation within brain has been studied extensively via BOLD fMRI. Limiting investigation to brain alone provides a truncated view of the central nervous system as it does not capture information exchange between brain and spinal cord. Simultaneously imaging brain, brainstem, and cervical spine provides insight into pain modulation pathways because dorsal horn is the first synapse connecting periaqueductal gray with cortical pain regions. Sprenger & Finsterbusch (2015) have shown group-level functional connection of brain to spinal cord under noxious thermal stimulus. Here, we investigate subject-level differences in neural activity in brain-spinal cord.
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