Journal
PAIN
Volume 155, Issue 9, Pages 1727-1742Publisher
LIPPINCOTT WILLIAMS & WILKINS
DOI: 10.1016/j.pain.2014.05.023
Keywords
Brain; Children; Chronic pain; Fear; fMRI; Neuropathic; Treatment response
Categories
Funding
- National Institutes of Health [NINDS R01NS065051, NINDS K24NS064050, NICHD K23HD067202]
- C.B. Sara Page Mayo Endowment for Pediatric Pain Research and Treatment
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The amygdala is a key brain region with efferent and afferent neural connections that involve complex behaviors such as pain, reward, fear, and anxiety. This study evaluated resting state functional connectivity of the amygdala with cortical and subcortical regions in a group of chronic pain patients (pediatric complex regional pain syndrome) with age-sex matched control subjects before and after intensive physical-biobehavioral pain treatment. Our main findings include (1) enhanced functional connectivity from the amygdala to multiple cortical, subcortical, and cerebellar regions in patients compared with control subjects, with differences predominantly in the left amygdala in the pretreated condition (disease state); (2) dampened hyperconnectivity from the left amygdala to the motor cortex, parietal lobe, and cingulate cortex after intensive pain rehabilitation treatment within patients with nominal differences observed among healthy control subjects from time 1 to time 2 (treatment effects); (3) functional connectivity to several regions key to fear circuitry (prefrontal cortex, bilateral middle temporal lobe, bilateral cingulate, hippocampus) correlated with higher pain-related fear scores; and (4) decreases in pain-related fear associated with decreased connectivity between the amygdala and the motor and somatosensory cortex, cingulate, and frontal areas. Our data suggest that there are rapid changes in amygdala connectivity after an aggressive treatment program in children with chronic pain and intrinsic amygdala functional connectivity activity serving as a potential indicator of treatment response. (C) 2014 International Association for the Study of Pain. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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