Spatiotemporal integration of contextual and sensory information within the cortical hierarchy in human pain experience.

Pain is not a mere reflection of noxious input. Rather, it is constructed through the dynamic integration of current predictions with incoming sensory input. However, the temporal dynamics of the behavioral and neural processes underpinning this integration remain elusive.

Modulating subjective pain perception with decoded Montreal Neurological Institute-space neurofeedback: a proof-of-concept study.

Pain is a complex emotional experience that still remains challenging to manage. Previous functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have associated pain with distributed patterns of brain activity (i.e.

Decoding pain: uncovering the factors that affect the performance of neuroimaging-based pain models.

Neuroimaging-based pain biomarkers, when combined with machine learning techniques, have demonstrated potential in decoding pain intensity and diagnosing clinical pain conditions. However, a systematic evaluation of how different modeling options affect model performance remains unexplored. This study presents the results from a comprehensive literature survey and benchmark analysis.

Brain representations of affective valence and intensity in sustained pleasure and pain.

Pleasure and pain are two fundamental, intertwined aspects of human emotions. Pleasurable sensations can reduce subjective feelings of pain and vice versa, and we often perceive the termination of pain as pleasant and the absence of pleasure as unpleasant. This implies the existence of brain systems that integrate them into modality-general representations of affective experiences.

Brain decoding of spontaneous thought: Predictive modeling of self-relevance and valence using personal narratives.

The contents and dynamics of spontaneous thought are important factors for personality traits and mental health. However, assessing spontaneous thoughts is challenging due to their unconstrained nature, and directing participants' attention to report their thoughts may fundamentally alter them. Here, we aimed to decode two key content dimensions of spontaneous thought-self-relevance and valence-directly from brain activity.

A dorsomedial prefrontal cortex-based dynamic functional connectivity model of rumination.

Rumination is a cognitive style characterized by repetitive thoughts about one's negative internal states and is a common symptom of depression. Previous studies have linked trait rumination to alterations in the default mode network, but predictive brain markers of rumination are lacking. Here, we adopt a predictive modeling approach to develop a neuroimaging marker of rumination based on the variance of dynamic resting-state functional connectivity and test it across 5 diverse subclinical and clinical samples (total n = 288).

Optogenetic fMRI for Brain-Wide Circuit Analysis of Sensory Processing.

Sensory processing is a complex neurological process that receives, integrates, and responds to information from one's own body and environment, which is closely related to survival as well as neurological disorders. Brain-wide networks of sensory processing are difficult to investigate due to their dynamic regulation by multiple brain circuits. Optogenetics, a neuromodulation technique that uses light-sensitive proteins, can be combined with functional magnetic resonance imaging (ofMRI) to measure whole-brain activity.

Functional brain reconfiguration during sustained pain.

Pain is constructed through complex interactions among multiple brain systems, but it remains unclear how functional brain networks are reconfigured over time while experiencing pain. Here, we investigated the time-varying changes in the functional brain networks during 20 min capsaicin-induced sustained orofacial pain. In the early stage, the orofacial areas of the primary somatomotor cortex were separated from other areas of the somatosensory cortex and integrated with subcortical and frontoparietal regions, constituting an extended brain network of sustained pain.

Psychological well-being and salivary markers of inflammation: The moderating effect of age.

Increasing evidence suggests a significant impact of higher psychological well-being (PWB) on health outcomes; however, such associations have been studied exclusively in middle-aged to older adults. This study examined the aging effect on PWB measures as well as the moderating effect of age on the link between PWB and inflammation, using salivary markers by comparing the younger adults (n = 127; M  = 22.98 years) versus older adults (n = 75; M  = 75.

Neural signatures of individual variability in context-dependent perception of ambiguous facial expression.

How do we incorporate contextual information to infer others' emotional state? Here we employed a naturalistic context-dependent facial expression estimation task where participants estimated pleasantness levels of others' ambiguous expression faces when sniffing different contextual cues (e.g., urine, fish, water, and rose).

The neural signature of the decision value of future pain.

Pain is a primary driver of action. We often must voluntarily accept pain to gain rewards. Conversely, we may sometimes forego potential rewards to avoid associated pain.

Common and stimulus-type-specific brain representations of negative affect.

The brain contains both generalized and stimulus-type-specific representations of aversive events, but models of how these are integrated and related to subjective experience are lacking. We combined functional magnetic resonance imaging with predictive modeling to identify representations of generalized (common) and stimulus-type-specific negative affect across mechanical pain, thermal pain, aversive sounds and aversive images of four intensity levels each. This allowed us to examine how generalized and stimulus-specific representations jointly contribute to aversive experience.

Individual variability in brain representations of pain.

Characterizing cerebral contributions to individual variability in pain processing is crucial for personalized pain medicine, but has yet to be done. In the present study, we address this problem by identifying brain regions with high versus low interindividual variability in their relationship with pain. We trained idiographic pain-predictive models with 13 single-trial functional MRI datasets (n = 404, discovery set) and quantified voxel-level importance for individualized pain prediction.

Role of anterior cingulate cortex inputs to periaqueductal gray for pain avoidance.

Although pain-related excessive fear is known to be a key factor in chronic pain disability, which involves the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), little is known about the downstream circuits of the ACC for fear avoidance in pain processing. Using behavioral experiments and functional magnetic resonance imaging with optogenetics at 15.2 T, we demonstrate that the ACC is a part of the abnormal circuit changes in chronic pain and its downstream circuits are closely related to modulating sensorimotor integration and generating active movement rather than carrying sensory information.

A multistudy analysis reveals that evoked pain intensity representation is distributed across brain systems.

Information is coded in the brain at multiple anatomical scales: locally, distributed across regions and networks, and globally. For pain, the scale of representation has not been formally tested, and quantitative comparisons of pain representations across regions and networks are lacking. In this multistudy analysis of 376 participants across 11 studies, we compared multivariate predictive models to investigate the spatial scale and location of evoked heat pain intensity representation.

Effect sizes and test-retest reliability of the fMRI-based neurologic pain signature.

Identifying biomarkers that predict mental states with large effect sizes and high test-retest reliability is a growing priority for fMRI research. We examined a well-established multivariate brain measure that tracks pain induced by nociceptive input, the Neurologic Pain Signature (NPS). In N = 295 participants across eight studies, NPS responses showed a very large effect size in predicting within-person single-trial pain reports (d = 1.

Post-Stroke Cognitive Impairment: Pathophysiological Insights into Brain Disconnectome from Advanced Neuroimaging Analysis Techniques.

The neurological symptoms of stroke have traditionally provided the foundation for functional mapping of the brain. However, there are many unresolved aspects in our understanding of cerebral activity, especially regarding high-level cognitive functions. This review provides a comprehensive look at the pathophysiology of post-stroke cognitive impairment in light of recent findings from advanced imaging techniques.

Neural mechanisms of pain relief through paying attention to painful stimuli.

A commonly held belief suggests that turning one's attention away from pain reduces it, whereas paying attention to pain increases it. However, some attention-based therapeutic strategies for pain, such as mindfulness-based interventions, suggest that paying attention to painful stimuli can reduce pain, resulting in seemingly contradictory conclusions regarding attention and pain. Here, we investigated the analgesic effects of attention modulation and provide behavioral and neural evidence that paying attention to pain can reduce pain when attention is directed toward the specific features of painful stimuli.

A neuroimaging biomarker for sustained experimental and clinical pain.

Sustained pain is a major characteristic of clinical pain disorders, but it is difficult to assess in isolation from co-occurring cognitive and emotional features in patients. In this study, we developed a functional magnetic resonance imaging signature based on whole-brain functional connectivity that tracks experimentally induced tonic pain intensity and tested its sensitivity, specificity and generalizability to clinical pain across six studies (total n = 334). The signature displayed high sensitivity and specificity to tonic pain across three independent studies of orofacial tonic pain and aversive taste.