Exploring the brain in pain: activations, deactivations and their relation. Pain 2010 Feb;148(2):257-267
Date
12/17/2009Pubmed ID
20005043Pubmed Central ID
PMC2815185DOI
10.1016/j.pain.2009.11.008Scopus ID
2-s2.0-74449089277 (requires institutional sign-in at Scopus site) 201 CitationsAbstract
The majority of neuroimaging studies on pain focuses on the study of BOLD activations, and more rarely on deactivations. In this study, in a relatively large cohort of subjects (N=61), we assess (a) the extent of brain activation and deactivation during the application of two different heat pain levels (HIGH and LOW) and (b) the relations between these two directions of fMRI signal change. Furthermore, in a subset of our subjects (N=12), we assess (c) the functional connectivity of pain-activated or -deactivated regions during resting states. As previously observed, we find that pain stimuli induce intensity dependent (HIGH pain>LOW pain) fMRI signal increases across the pain matrix. Simultaneously, the noxious stimuli induce activity decreases in several brain regions, including some of the 'core structures' of the default network (DMN). In contrast to what we observe with the signal increases, the extent of deactivations is greater for LOW than HIGH pain stimuli. The functional dissociation between activated and deactivated networks is further supported by correlational and functional connectivity analyses. Our results illustrate the absence of a linear relationship between pain activations and deactivations, and therefore suggest that these brain signal changes underlie different aspects of the pain experience.
Author List
Kong J, Loggia ML, Zyloney C, Tu P, LaViolette P, Gollub RLAuthor
Peter LaViolette PhD Professor in the Radiology department at Medical College of WisconsinMESH terms used to index this publication - Major topics in bold
AdultBrain
Brain Mapping
Female
Forearm
Functional Laterality
Humans
Image Processing, Computer-Assisted
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Neural Pathways
Oxygen
Pain
Pain Measurement
Pain Threshold
Sex Factors
Statistics as Topic
Young Adult
