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Functional Neuroimaging in Whiplash Injury

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Abstract

In patients with late whiplash syndrome, early studies showed a statistically significant metabolic reduction in the posterior parietal occipital region of the brain. This could be observed in several studies with altogether over 500 investigated patients both by cerebral blood flow single-photon emission tomography (SPET) and by 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) positron emission tomography (PET). In individual cases, the patients exhibited also regions with decreased metabolism which were not in the posterior parietal occipital localization, but in these, no statistically significant group differences to a healthy control group could be determined. Posterior parietal occipital findings can also be seen in other diseases with brain affection, e.g., in systemic lupus erythematosus, in Alzheimer’s disease, or in migraine. Such other diseases can easily be excluded by a purposeful clinical and neurological assessment. There are also diseases that show a similar clinical component as the late whiplash syndrome, e.g., primary depression. In these diseases, the posterior parietal occipital region is, however, not affected.

The aforementioned studies have only focused on hypoperfusion/hypometabolism in whiplash patients since the main clinical symptoms were neurological deficits (attention, memory, and vision). Newer studies, however, also focused on hyperperfusion/hypermetabolism and have shown additional brain regions with a disturbed activation pattern, which is directly involved in pain perception and interoceptive processing.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The full text of this open-access study including all supplementary material can be retrieved under https://www.ebiomedicine.com/article/S2352-3964(16)30313-9/fulltext

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  1. Peter Osypka Institute of Medical Engineering, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Medical Engineering and Computer Science, Offenburg University, Offenburg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany

    Andreas Otte

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Otte, A. (2022). Current Research Data. In: Functional Neuroimaging in Whiplash Injury. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91255-0_3

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