The Statistical Analysis of Pharmacological fMRI Data, with an Application to a Study of Expectancy-Based Enhancement of Opioid Analgesia

• Activity Number: 565
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 4, 2010 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Biopharmaceutical Section
• Author(s): Martin Lindquist*+ and Lauren Atlas and Tor Wager
• Companies: Columbia University and Columbia University and University of Colorado
• Keywords: pharmacological fMRI ; fMRI ; brain ; change point detection ; functional data analysis

Abstract

It is believed that expectancies enhance the effects of active pharmacological treatments. Though research suggests that common brain regions are influenced by both placebo and opioid treatments, it is unknown whether knowledge of drug delivery enhances drug effects on the brain. In this study pharmacological fMRI was used to compare the effects of overt vs. covert administration of remifentanil, an opiate analgesic, on brain responses to noxious thermal stimulation. The resulting data exhibits complications not seen in standard fMRI studies, with responses depending on drug concentration levels and time-varying changes in brain state. Hence, the data offers particular challenges for subsequent statistical analysis. In this talk we discuss a variety of ways to analyze this data including the use of change-point detection methods and ideas from functional data analysis.