Functional imaging of the human brainstem during somatosensory input and autonomic output.

Functional imaging of the human brainstem during somatosensory input and autonomic output. Luke A. Henderson and Vaughan G. Macefield. Frontier in Human Neuroscience. Published as open access: September 17 Vol 7: 1-8, 2013 doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00569. Very cool paper in which functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used in humans to image brainstem sites believed to be involved in pain and autonomic cardiovascular control. Images were compared at 3T and 7T and shown quite distinguished differences. Muscle sympathetic nerve activity (MSNA) was used to correlate to brain areas that were activated mainly in the NTS, CVLM, and RVLM. I'm pretty sure someone did this paper for journal club but I didn't see that it had been blogged so here it is. ;-) ~PJM