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Analyses of intrinsic network activity have been instrumental in revealing cortical processes that are altered in chronic pain patients. In a novel approach, we aimed to elucidate how intrinsic functional networks evolve in regard to the fluctuating intensity of the experience of chronic pain. In a longitudinal study with 156 fMRI sessions, 20 chronic back pain patients and 20 chronic migraine patients were asked to continuously rate the intensity of their endogenous pain. We investigated the relationship between the fluctuation of intrinsic network activity with the time course of subjective pain ratings. For chronic back pain, we found increased cortical network activity for the salience network and a local pontine network, as well as decreased network activity in the anterior and posterior default mode network for higher pain intensities. Higher pain intensities in chronic migraine were accompanied with lower activity in a prefrontal cortical network. By taking the perspective of the individual, we focused on the variability of the subjective perception of pain, which include phases of relatively low pain and phases of relatively high pain. The present design of the assessment of ongoing endogenous pain can be a powerful and promising tool to assess the signature of a patient's endogenous pain encoding.

Original publication

DOI

10.1038/s41598-021-01340-0

Type

Journal article

Journal

Sci Rep

Publication Date

08/11/2021

Volume

11

Keywords

Adult, Back Pain, Brain Mapping, Cerebral Cortex, Chronic Pain, Female, Functional Neuroimaging, Humans, Longitudinal Studies, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Middle Aged, Migraine Disorders, Nerve Net, Neural Pathways, Pain Measurement, Pain Perception, Prefrontal Cortex, Young Adult