Functional MRI in Pain Management

Functional MRI (fMRI) studies in pain management examine the potential clinical role of fMRI in the diagnosis and treatment of acute and chronic pain conditions. In this chapter, the unique spatial and temporal properties of the brain’s response to pain are discussed first, because they provide the basis for potential clinical applications of fMRI. The second section considers several specific clinical roles that could be filled by fMRI. These include: detecting acute pain using a combination of machine learning and task-based fMRI, detecting chronic pain using functional connectivity MRI (fcMRI), predicting the development of chronic pain using fcMRI, monitoring the treatment of pain using fMRI, and treating pain directly using fMRI-based biofeedback. The possibility of translating fMRI findings to less expensive, more mobile technologies that could facilitate widespread clinical implementation is also discussed.