Poster 261: Increased Functional Connectivity between Pain‐Affect and Body‐Perception Brain Regions in Fibromyalgia
Year: 2009
Type: article
Abstract: M. C. Hsu, None. To determine regions with significant resting-state functional connectivity to a well-known pain-affect region (anterior insular cortex, AIns) in fibromyalgia (FM) patients compared to healthy controls, using functional connectivity MRI (fcMRI). Cross-sectional design embedded within a clinical trial. Research laboratory within an academic institution. 29 FM patients (ages 23-59) and 17 healthy controls (HC; ages 22-57), all right-handed women. Subjects were scanned in a 3T MRI scanner (GE Signa LX). Each subject was instructed to lie quietly for 6 minutes while viewing a fixation cross, during which 144 whole-brain images were acquired. Functional connectivity to the AIns, determined as follows: Images were normalized to a standard template, smoothed with a 5mm kernel, and filtered to allow only the 0 - 0.08 Hz band. BOLD signal time-series were extracted from left and right AIns seed regions and correlated with time-series from all voxels of the brain. The resulting voxel-wise r maps were transformed to Z-maps, which were entered into one- and two-sample T-tests (height threshold P < .0025, corrected cluster threshold P < .05). For both FM patients and HC, one-sample t-tests revealed significant connectivity between bilateral AIns, and between each AIns and bilateral inferior parietal lobules (IPL) (P < .01 corrected, for all regions). Two-sample t-tests revealed significantly greater functional connectivity in FM patients between right AIns and left IPL (peak coordinates {-60,-33,36}, 38 voxels, P = .048 corrected), compared to HC. This is the first study to compare functional connectivity to the insular cortex between FM and HC. Given the role of the IPL in self-awareness and own-body perception, the increased connectivity seen in FM between AIns and IPL is consistent with enhanced negative affect in association with body self-awareness. This altered sensory-affective relationship may play a role in the perpetuation of chronic pain in FM, and may serve as a future target for brain-based biofeedback in the rehabilitation of FM. Further studies are needed to explore the relationship between altered AIns connectivity and dysfunctional pain processing in FM.
Source: PM&R
Institution: University of Michigan
Language: English
Subfield: Psychiatry and Mental health
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2092012556