Pain stickiness in pediatric complex regional pain syndrome: A role for the nucleus accumbens.

Some individuals with chronic pain experience improvement in their pain with treatment, whereas others do not. The neurobiological reason is unclear, but an understanding of brain structure and functional patterns may provide insights into pain's responsivity to treatment. In this investigation, we used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques to determine grey matter density alterations on resting functional connectivity (RFC) strengths between pain responders and nonresponders in patients with complex regional pain syndrome.

Longitudinal Narrative Analysis of Parent Experiences During Graded Exposure Treatment for Children With Chronic Pain.

Objectives: Parents have a vital influence over their child's chronic pain treatment and management. Graded exposure in vivo treatment (GET) is emerging as a promising intervention for youth with chronic pain. Yet, little is known about how parents perceive GET and its impact on their child's pain condition.

Gait Variability and Relationships With Fear, Avoidance, and Pain in Adolescents With Chronic Pain.

Objective: Some children with chronic pain struggle with fear of pain, avoidance behaviors, and associated disability; however, movement adaptations in the context of chronic pain in childhood is virtually unknown. Variability in adaptive movement responses previously observed between individuals might be largely explained by the presence of problematic psychological drivers (eg, fear, avoidance). The goals of this study were to quantify the variability of gait and examine relationships among pain, fear, avoidance, function (perceived and objective), and gait variability.

Brain signatures of threat-safety discrimination in adolescent chronic pain.

Approximately 1.7 million youth suffer from debilitating chronic pain in the US alone, conferring risk of continued pain in adulthood. Aberrations in threat-safety (T-S) discrimination are proposed to contribute to pain chronicity in adults and youth by interacting with pain-related distress.

Avoid or engage? Outcomes of graded exposure in youth with chronic pain using a sequential replicated single-case randomized design.

Pain-related fear is typically associated with avoidance behavior and pain-related disability in youth with chronic pain. Youth with elevated pain-related fear have attenuated treatment responses; thus, targeted treatment is highly warranted. Evidence supporting graded in vivo exposure treatment (GET) for adults with chronic pain is considerable, but just emerging for youth.

Cardiorespiratory fitness predicts effective connectivity between the hippocampus and default mode network nodes in young adults.

Rodent and human studies examining the relationship between aerobic exercise, brain structure, and brain function indicate that the hippocampus (HC), a brain region critical for episodic memory, demonstrates striking plasticity in response to exercise. Beyond the hippocampal memory system, human studies also indicate that aerobic exercise and cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) are associated with individual differences in large-scale brain networks responsible for broad cognitive domains. Examining network activity in large-scale resting-state brain networks may provide a link connecting the observed relationships between aerobic exercise, hippocampal plasticity, and cognitive enhancement within broad cognitive domains.

Pain neuroscience education on YouTube.

Objectives: The Internet in general, and YouTube in particular, is now one of the most popular sources of health-related information. Pain neuroscience education has become a primary tool for managing persistent pain, based in part on the discovery that information about pain can change pain. Our objective was to examine the availability, characteristics, and content of YouTube videos that address the neuroscience of pain.

Is Empathy for Pain Unique in Its Neural Correlates? A Meta-Analysis of Neuroimaging Studies of Empathy.

Empathy is an essential component of our social lives, allowing us to understand and share other people's affective and sensory states, including pain. Evidence suggests a core neural network-including anterior insula (AI) and mid-cingulate cortex (MCC)-is involved in empathy for pain. However, a similar network is associated to empathy for non-pain affective states, raising the question whether empathy for pain is unique in its neural correlates.

Feeling the Pressure to Be Perfect: Effect on Pain-Related Distress and Dysfunction in Youth With Chronic Pain.

Unlabelled: Despite clinical observation of perfectionistic tendencies among youth with chronic pain and their parents as well as established relationships between perfectionism and functional somatic symptoms in adults and youth, no research in the pediatric pain literature has examined perfectionism. This study explored the role of various types of youth and parent perfectionism on youth and parent pain-related distress and behavior and youth pain-related dysfunction. At admission, 239 parent-child pairs from outpatient and day-treatment rehabilitation settings completed several questionnaires assessing perfectionism, pain-related distress, and pain-related dysfunction.