Altered Spontaneous Brain Activity in Patients with Classical Trigeminal Neuralgia Using Regional Homogeneity: A Resting‐State Functional MRI Study

Abstract

Objective Neuroimaging studies have shown that patients with pain‐related conditions have altered neuronal activity and structural functions. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether patients with classical trigeminal neuralgia (CTN) exhibit changes in corresponding neuronal activity via analysis of neuronal activity regional homogeneity (ReHo). Methods A total of 28 patients presenting with sore eyes (12 men and 16 women) were matched with 28 healthy controls (12 men and 16 women). All participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). This ReHo method was used to assess the consistency of changes in neural activity in various brain regions. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was applied to differentiate ReHo values of patients with CTN from ReHo values of healthy controls. Pearson's correlation analysis was applied to evaluate the correlation between ReHo values of different brain regions of patients with CTN and clinical manifestations. Results Compared with healthy controls, patients with CTN were found to have increased ReHo values in the inferior cerebellum bilaterally, right inferior temporal gyrus, right middle occipital gyrus, right fusiform gyrus, right superior frontal gyrus, and right precentral gyrus. ROC curve analysis of each brain region revealed near‐perfect accuracy regarding the area under the curve. However, no correlation between ReHo values and clinical manifestations in patients with CTN was found. Conclusions CTN is associated with altered neuronal networks in different areas of the brain. ReHo values all possess different degrees of change, implying that CTN has a certain impact on cerebral function.

Trigeminal neuralgia: An overview from pathophysiology to pharmacological treatments

“…69 For the ReHo analysis which reflects temporal synchronization of the BOLD signal, TN patients showed an increase in ReHo in the anterior cingulate, middle and inferior temporal gyrus, medial and superior frontal gyrus, right fusiform gyrus, and right thalamus and a decrease in the left amygdala, the parahippocampal gyrus, cerebellum, and insula. 75 Collectively, these studies demonstrated that TN may be associated with brain alterations with a complex spatiotemporal pattern activity, highlighting impairments in major brain areas that are part of the "pain matrix." It has been suggested that changes in brain structure in TN patients have a correlation with disease duration and is related to a worse prognosis.…”

Alterations of Dynamic Regional Homogeneity in Trigeminal Neuralgia: A Resting-State fMRI Study

“…Obermann et al used voxel-based morphometry (VBM) to compare the brain morphology between TN patients and healthy individuals and showed that TN patients had a reduction in the gray-matter volume within multiple brain regions, which was similar to that found in our previous study of TN gray-matter volume (8, 11). However, to the best of our knowledge, fewer studies have explored the resting-state regional-homogeneity (ReHo) changes in TN patients and have yielded inconsistent results (12–14). For example, a study by Yuan et al showed an increased ReHo in the anterior cingulate gyrus, middle temporal gyrus, and superior frontal gyrus and a decreased ReHo in the insula and cerebellum of TN patients, compared with those of the control group (13).…”

<p>Brain Functional Alternations of the Pain-related Emotional and Cognitive Regions in Patients with Chronic Shoulder Pain</p>

“…The whole brain ReHo maps were acquired by computing the consistency of the time series between each voxel and its adjacent 26 voxel in brain. 12 The cluster-level corrected for Gaussian Random Field theory correction (GRF) (voxel level p<0.001 and cluster level p<0.05, Two-Tailed) was applied for the between-groups analysis.…”

“…9 The painrelated brain regions primarily included the thalamus, insula and anterior cingulate, while other brain regions were likely to be stimulus-specific. 10 In recent years, many studies have valuated the underlying neurophysiological mechanism of brain functional changes in low back pain, 11 trigeminal neuralgia, 12 chronic migraine, 13,14 fibromyalgia, 15 knee osteoarthritis, 16 visceral pain, 17 but literature focused on abnormal pattern of cerebral networks for pain processing in patients with shoulder pain is insufficient. In the brain, the functional interaction effects of pain, cognitive as well as negative affect have been widely reported 18,19 and multiple mechanisms are needed to fully explain the emotional and cognitive brain alternations associated with pain.…”

“…Overall, many neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that patients with pain-related symptoms have abnormal neuronal activity and structural function, [11][12][13][14][15][16][17] few have focused on chronic shoulder pain. Therefore, the main objective of our study is to investigate how chronic shoulder pain affects brain function.…”