Morphine Modulation of The Brain's Pain Matrix

Summary

The aim of the current project is to use a model of painful stimulation of skin, muscles and internal organs, where it is possible to measure activity in the brain centers that process pain simultaneously. Magnetic resonance imaging and electroencephalography are combined to optimize the anatomical and physiological description of brain activation. During administration of morphine we will identify how different brain areas are affected. This knowledge will be used to: 1\. Understand the mechanisms of morphine to a greater extent than is possible today, including: 1. to investigate the mechanisms of morphine versus placebo on pain signals in the spinal cord and brain. This is done by a combination of experimental pain models, neurophysiological and imaging techniques (EEG and fMRI). This can be achieved as both subjective and objective measures of the analgesic effect. 2. to examine morphines effect on communication between the centers of the brain that are involved in painprocessing . 3. modeling of morphine pharmacokinetics (the understanding of what the body does to the drug, such as. concentration in the blood and the brain), since this is central to understand the pharmacodynamics (the description of what the drug does to the body and thus the effect it has). 4. to identify biomarkers that can predict whether healthy subjects respond to morphine by experiencing an analgesic effect.

Timeline

Start

2010-10

Primary completion

2012-09

Completion

2012-09

Publications

• Hansen TM, Olesen AE, Graversen C, Drewes AM, Frokjaer JB. The Effect of Oral Morphine on Pain-Related Brain Activation - An Experimental Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study. Basic Clin Pharmacol Toxicol. 2015 Nov;117(5):316-22. doi: 10.1111/bcpt.12415. Epub 2015 May 29.
• Hansen TM, Graversen C, Frokjaer JB, Olesen AE, Valeriani M, Drewes AM. Single-sweep spectral analysis of contact heat evoked potentials: a novel approach to identify altered cortical processing after morphine treatment. Br J Clin Pharmacol. 2015 Jun;79(6):926-36. doi: 10.1111/bcp.12579.

Drugs

Indications