Neuroimaging of the Periaqueductal Gray: State of the Field
By C. Linnman, E. Moulton, Gabi Barmettler, L. Becerra, D. Borsook. NeuroImage, 2011
371 citations recorded by the source corpus.
This review and meta-analysis aims at summarizing and integrating the human neuroimaging studies that report periaqueductal gray (PAG) involvement; 250 original manuscripts on human neuroimaging of the PAG were identified. A narrative review and meta-analysis using activation likelihood estimates is included. Behaviors covered include pain and pain modulation, anxiety, bladder and bowel function and autonomic regulation. Methods include structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging, functional connectivity measures, diffusion weighted imaging and positron emission tomography. Human neuroimaging studies in healthy and clinical populations largely confirm the animal literature indicating that the PAG is involved in homeostatic regulation of salient functions such as pain, anxiety and autonomic function. Methodological concerns in the current literature, including resolution constraints, imaging artifacts and imprecise neuroanatomical labeling are discussed, and future directions are proposed. A general conclusion is that PAG neuroimaging is a field with enormous potential to translate animal data onto human behaviors, but with some growing pains that can and need to be addressed in order to add to our understanding of the neurobiology of this key region.
Subfields: Physiology, Surgery
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1588a6b8d054f39e35b40b3f42c6e94db80a39ca
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In Physiology
Citations in the corpus
- Migraine pathophysiology: anatomy of the trigeminovascular pathway and associated neurological symptoms, CSD, sensitization and modulation of pain (2013, background): “This complex pattern of activation appears as not specific to migraine [13; 34; 55; 71; 129] and reflects a potential role in facial and muscle tenderness, abnormal tactile sensation, motion sickness, nausea, altered auditory perception and more importantly, modulation of pain.”