Patients with Chronic Pain Exhibit Individually Unique Cortical Signatures of Pain Encoding

Overview

Journal Hum Brain Mapp

Publisher Wiley

Specialty Neurology

Date 2021 Dec 18

PMID 34921467

Citations 15

Authors

Astrid Mayr

Pauline Jahn

Anne Stankewitz

Bettina Deak

Anderson Winkler

Viktor Witkovsky

Ozan Eren

Andreas Straube

Enrico Schulz

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Chronic pain is characterised by an ongoing and fluctuating intensity over time. Here, we investigated how the trajectory of the patients' endogenous pain is encoded in the brain. In repeated functional MRI (fMRI) sessions, 20 patients with chronic back pain and 20 patients with chronic migraine were asked to continuously rate the intensity of their endogenous pain. Linear mixed effects models were used to disentangle cortical processes related to pain intensity and to pain intensity changes. At group level, we found that the intensity of pain in patients with chronic back pain is encoded in the anterior insular cortex, the frontal operculum, and the pons; the change of pain in chronic back pain and chronic migraine patients is mainly encoded in the anterior insular cortex. At the individual level, we identified a more complex picture where each patient exhibited their own signature of endogenous pain encoding. The diversity of the individual cortical signatures of chronic pain encoding results bridge between clinical observations and neuroimaging; they add to the understanding of chronic pain as a complex and multifaceted disease.

Citing Articles

Individual variability in cortical representations of tonic pain.

Deak B, Stankewitz A, Mayr A, Witkovsky V, Jahn P, Schulz E Heliyon. 2025; 11(3):e42458.

PMID: 40007775 PMC: 11850121. DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2025.e42458.

The Two Sides of Placebo Analgesia: Differential Functional Connectivity Reveals Mechanisms of Placebo Analgesic Response.

Bush N, Cushnie A, Boissoneault J, Aghabeigi S, Alexander C, Staud R J Pain Res. 2025; 18():189-201.

PMID: 39816204 PMC: 11733195. DOI: 10.2147/JPR.S483157.

Disrupted topologic efficiency of white matter structural connectome in migraine: a graph-based connectomics study.

Mei Y, Qiu D, Xiong Z, Li X, Zhang P, Zhang M J Headache Pain. 2024; 25(1):204.

PMID: 39581995 PMC: 11587760. DOI: 10.1186/s10194-024-01919-8.

Statistical learning shapes pain perception and prediction independently of external cues.

Onysk J, Gregory N, Whitefield M, Jain M, Turner G, Seymour B Elife. 2024; 12.

PMID: 38985572 PMC: 11236420. DOI: 10.7554/eLife.90634.

Towards a Real-Life Understanding of the Altered Functional Behaviour of the Default Mode and Salience Network in Chronic Pain: Are People with Chronic Pain Overthinking the Meaning of Their Pain?.

Johansson E, Xiong H, Polli A, Coppieters I, Nijs J J Clin Med. 2024; 13(6).

PMID: 38541870 PMC: 10971341. DOI: 10.3390/jcm13061645.

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