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Investigating the brain functional abnormalities underlying pain hypervigilance in chronic neck and shoulder pain: a resting-state fMRI study

  • Diagnostic Neuroradiology
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Abstract

Purpose

To investigate pain hypervigilance in individuals suffering from chronic neck and shoulder pain (CNSP) and its underlying brain mechanism.

Methods

The evaluation of pain vigilance was conducted through the utilization of pain vigilance and awareness questionnaires. Voxel-wise regional homogeneity (ReHo) from 60 CNSP patients and 60 healthy controls (HCs) using resting-state fMRI data. Voxel-wise two-sample T-test was conducted to reveal the ReHo variations between CNSP and HC. Correlation analyses were utilized to reveal the connection between brain abnormalities and medical measurements. Furthermore, a mediation analysis was conducted to elucidate the pathway-linking changes in brain function with medical measurements.

Results

Our present study revealed three main findings. Firstly, patients with CSNP demonstrated a heightened vigilance of pain in comparison to healthy adults, a common occurrence among individuals with chronic pain conditions. Secondly, we observed brain abnormalities in various brain regions in CSNP patients, and these alterations were associated with the extent of pain vigilance. Lastly, the pain hypervigilance impact on the severity of pain was found to be controlled by regional neural activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) in subjects with CSNP.

Conclusion

Our findings suggested that long-term repetitive nociceptive input caused by chronic pain further aggravates the pain intensity by impairing the vigilance-related pain processing within the anterior cingulate cortex in CNSP patients.

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Data availability

The data and the codes used in current study are available upon reasonable request to the corresponding author.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Radiology Department, Tianjin Hospital, Tianjin University, Jiefang Nan Road 406, Hexi District, Tianjin, 300211, People’s Republic of China

    Jiyang Zhang, Hao Wang & Lin Guo

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  1. Jiyang Zhang
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  2. Hao Wang
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  3. Lin Guo
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Correspondence to Lin Guo.

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Zhang, J., Wang, H. & Guo, L. Investigating the brain functional abnormalities underlying pain hypervigilance in chronic neck and shoulder pain: a resting-state fMRI study. Neuroradiology (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00234-024-03286-2

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