The relationship between nociceptive brain activity

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Jul 31, 2015 - 3Nuffield Department of Anaesthesia, John Radcliffe Hospital, OX3 9DU, UK. ..... Sphericity was checked using Mauchly's Test for Sphericity.
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received: 30 March 2015 accepted: 22 June 2015 Published: 31 July 2015

The relationship between nociceptive brain activity, spinal reflex withdrawal and behaviour in newborn infants Caroline Hartley1, Sezgi Goksan2, Ravi Poorun2, Kelly Brotherhood1, Gabriela Schmidt Mellado1, Fiona Moultrie1, Richard Rogers3, Eleri Adams1 & Rebeccah Slater1 Measuring infant pain is complicated by their inability to describe the experience. While nociceptive brain activity, reflex withdrawal and facial grimacing have been characterised, the relationship between these activity patterns has not been examined. As cortical and spinally mediated activity is developmentally regulated, it cannot be assumed that they are predictive of one another in the immature nervous system. Here, using a new experimental paradigm, we characterise the nociceptive-specific brain activity, spinal reflex withdrawal and behavioural activity following graded intensity noxious stimulation and clinical heel lancing in 30 term infants. We show that nociceptivespecific brain activity and nociceptive reflex withdrawal are graded with stimulus intensity (p