The combination of somatosensory fMRI (sfMRI) and mouse genomics holds great potential to unravel the underlying mechanisms of chronic pain. Transient stimuli were shown to induce unspecific BOLD patterns in mice. It is known that increases in mean arterial blood pressure (MABP) can mimic BOLD activations in rats. To detail the origin of the unspecific BOLD patterns evoked in the murine brain we performed sfMRI along with pharmacologically induced blood pressure alterations while monitoring MABP. We compared MABP changes, BOLD signals and BOLD patterns between the types of stimuli and observed confounding effects of MABP on murine BOLD fMRI.
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