Topic: painful stimuli

The promise of fMRI to detect robust inter-individual differences in health and behavioural outcomes and its potential use as a biomarker has been increasingly called into question. In a recent study (Hoeppli et al., 2022), the authors argued that, in the context of pain perception, fMRI was sensitive to small differences in applied noxious stimuli within an individual, but failed at predicting inter-individual differences. Here, we test in six studies whether this absent predictive power can be restored by accounting for inter-individual variance and the use of clearly distinguishable experim

This study aimed to delve into the role of the brainstem nucleus incertus (NI) as a structure involved in stress-response generation and its interactions with the ventral tegmental area (VTA), a key component of the brain's reward system. By tracing neural pathways using a retrograde viral vector, the NI-originating innervation of the VTA was confirmed within the midbrain of Sprague-Dawley rats. Immunohistochemical staining revealed that only a small percentage of NI neurons containing the relaxin-3 neuropeptide also project to the VTA, suggesting specialization of the connectivity between the