How do surgical procedures affect infant pain-related brain activity?
Understanding the transition form acute to ongoing pain
In infants, the brain activity in response to an acute painful procedure, such as immunisation or heel-lance blood testing, has been well characterised, but the changes in brain activity following longer duration procedures has not been fully investigated.
We are investigating how the infant brain responds to the complex noxious stimulus of retinopathy of prematurity screening and treatment. In adults, brain activity in response to tonic pain has been characterised using spectral frequency analysis of the electroencephalogram (EEG). We are analysing the infant EEG in a variety of ways, including spectral frequency analysis, to understand the changes in brain activity evoked after noxious stimuli.
We want to understand more about how the infant recovers after a tonic noxious stimulus, particularly the time course to stabilisation of brain activity and systemic physiology.