Altered mesocorticolimbic functional connectivity in chronic low back pain patients at rest and following sad mood induction

AbstractDepressive symptoms are common among individuals with chronic pain. Previous work suggests that chronic pain patients have difficulty regulating emotional responses, which is a risk factor for the development of major depressive disorder (MDD). Function of the mesocorticolimbic system, a neural network associated with reward processing, contributes to emotion regulation. This network ’s dysfunction has been described in chronic pain and MDD research and potentially underlies the relationship among emotion dysregulation, chronic pain, and MDD development. Given that mood induction paradigms have been used to measure emotion regulation, the present study examined intrinsic mesoc orticolimbic functional connectivity (FC) after induced sad mood in individuals with and without chronic low back pain (cLBP). Thirty-three MDD-free individuals (17 cLBP) underwent resting-state scanning before and after sad memory-evoked mood induction. A Group [cLBP, healthy control (HC)] x Mood ( Neutral, Sadness) repeated measures ANCOVA was conducted on seed-based FC data using a mesolimbic a priori region of interest. Interaction effects were identified in the orbital frontal cortex and inferior frontal gyrus [F(2,29) = 21.07, pFDR <  .05. hp2 = .5]. Whereas cLBP showed significantly greater FC between these two regions and the mesolimbic seed under neutral mood, FC among these regions increased in HC and decreased in cLBP under sad mood. Exploratory graph theory analyses f...
Source: Brain Imaging and Behavior - Category: Neurology Source Type: research