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Monitoring the Effects of Repeated Exposure to Noxious & Innocuous Stimuli on the HDR Using FNIRS
Start Date: 6/7/2017Start Time: 12:00 PM
End Date: 6/7/2017End Time: 2:00 PM

Event Description
BIOMED PhD Thesis Defense

Title:
Monitoring the Effects of Repeated Exposure to Noxious & Innocuous Stimuli on the HDR Using FNIRS

Speaker:
Daryl Omire-Mayor, PhD Candidate, School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems

Advisor:
Kambiz Pourrezaei, PhD, Professor, School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems

Abstract:
Pain is one of the least well understood phenomena in modern medicine. There are several components to it that make it difficult to understand. In one regard, pain is the result of some external event. From the external event, when the body’s defense system goes into action, pain is part of the healing process that allows the body to repair the damage that is done. Pain can also be the result of neuronal degradation or physiological changes in the body, that do not necessarily occur as the result of external happenings. Given these differences, it is difficult to find the appropriate tool to use in clinical settings when treating patients with pain. In the last couple of decades, with the advancements in technology as well as data analysis improvements, there has been a paralleled increase in research done in the field of pain; furthermore, as non-invasive modalities become the standard in medicine, imaging modalities have led the field in breakthroughs when it comes to measuring pain. There have been a series of goals that each of these modalities attempt to achieve, and where this has led pain research to where it is today.

The first of these goals is to find biomarkers that are coupled with the body’s pain response. Biomarkers, like their name suggests, are markers in the biological make up of individuals that are linked with physiological processes. Their importance is in their linkage, because the linkage allows different physiological processes to be followed, monitored, and appropriately treated when something goes wrong. Without these in place, it would make treating bodily ailments more difficult, but taking this approach to investigating pain is one of the first steps in finding physiological features that are best situated to aide physicians in diagnosing and treating pain.

The second of these goals is to link all of the anatomical features that are influenced by pain. Excluding the local area to which external stimuli may be applied to cause pain, from the ascending pathways that work in the spinal cord, to the processing of pain experience that occurs in the brain, breaking down every step that is involved in this process proves essential if pain is to ever be completely understood. Robert Melzack was one of the firsts to do this through coining the pain matrix. While this in many regards is still held as one of the most relevant theories in the field of pain research, growing evidence suggests that there may also be several other parts of the body that interact outside of the matrix and contribute to the pain experience.

The third is finding an effective method of achieving the first and second goals. While this may seem intuitive, several factors are taken into consideration. Many of the technologies that provide accurate information about the body for diagnosis such as PET, SPECT, CT, and MRI are extremely effective in tracking biomarkers for pain as well as identifying which body parts are influenced by the pain response. Despite their accuracy however, what these systems lack in is their ease of use. Each of the systems identified above are extremely expensive for hospitals or clinics to obtain, and even more, to run tests using these systems cost an exorbitant amount of money. As a result, this shortcoming has given way to other modalities that provide similar information, but are more cost effective and can be used routinely in a clinical setting. Tools such as ultra sound, laser dopplar flowtometry, and near infrared spectroscopy have gained traction in the field of pain research. One of the problems however is that these devices are initially not able to provide the same quality of information, which has caused a growth in improving the data processing of the information provided by these modalities post-use.

Our measurements based in near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) are in support of the idea that objective biomarkers can be obtained from the fNIRS signal. Not only this, but previous studies in our lab, in conjunction with previous literature show that repeated exposure to noxious stimuli results in adaptation. This has also been described as a reduction in brain activity after being exposed to a stimuli multiple times. This is at the crux of our investigation and will take careful consideration during analysis to ensure quality results. Our results suggest that through monitoring the autonomic response to noxious stimuli in healthy subjects through repeated measures experimentation, we will be able to observe the adaptation to noxious stimuli using functional near infrared spectroscopy.
Contact Information:
Name: Ken Barbee
Phone: 215-895-1335
Email: barbee@drexel.edu
Daryl Omire-Mayor
Location:
Bossone Research Center, Room 709, located at 32nd and Market Streets.
Audience:
  • Undergraduate Students
  • Graduate Students
  • Faculty
  • Staff

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