Structural network differences in chronic musculoskeletal pain: Beyond fractional anisotropy

Musculoskeletal Pain and Brain Morphology: Oxytocin’s Potential as a Treatment for Chronic Pain in Aging

“…Results regarding the hippocampus, however, were mixed. While one study found lower hippocampal volume, mediated by cortisol levels, in chronic back pain patients than controls (Vachon-Presseau et al, 2013), another study found higher amygdala and hippocampus gray matter volumes associated with chronic musculoskeletal pain (Bishop et al, 2018).…”

“…Ung et al (2014), using structural MRI scans of 47 patients, with ages ranging from 19 to 60 years old, and 47 gender and age matched controls successfully classified 76% of chronic back pain patients based on gray matter density of the prefrontal, somatosensory, motor, and visual cortices, temporal lobe, amygdala, medial orbital gyrus, and cerebellum using multivariate support vector analysis. Furthermore, chronic musculoskeletal pain patients exhibited volumetric reductions, compared to pain-free agematched controls, in the dorsolateral prefrontal, motor (Bishop et al, 2018), somatosensory (Schmidt-Wilcke et al, 2006;Bishop et al, 2018), and cingulate cortices, with gray matter density reductions in the dorsolateral prefrontal and the middle cingulate cortices (Ivo et al, 2013).…”

“…Regarding subcortical structures, the basal ganglia (Schmidt-Wilcke et al, 2006), particularly the caudate (Bishop et al, 2018), showed higher volumes related to chronic musculoskeletal FIGURE 2 | Summary of significant overlap between brain regions demonstrating morphological associations with chronic muskuloskeletal pain (dark boxes) and those demonstrating morphological associations with the OT system and/or OT binding site locations (lighter ovals). Specifically, the anterior cingulate cortex, basal ganglia, thalamus, hippocampus, amygdala, and brainstem are volumetrically associated with chronic musculoskeletal pain and contain receptors/binding-sites with high affinity for OT.…”

“…There is also evidence of altered gray and white matter microstructure (i.e., fractional anisotropy) of the medial prefrontal cortex, the lateral prefrontal cortex, and the nucleus accumbens, along with connecting fibers (e.g., superior longitudinal fasciculus), as predictors of the transition to chronic pain for patients with a single back pain episode (Mansour et al, 2013). Chronic musculoskeletal pain patients also demonstrated altered white matter densities and connectivity within the dorsal attention network (Bishop et al, 2018). Such structural alterations may underlie the functional changes that predicted low back pain chronification in a prospective study (Baliki et al, 2012).…”

Diffusion tensor imaging of white matter microstructure in chronic pain: a tract-based spatial statistics study and a systematic review

“…One study mentioned a significant difference in age between patient and control group (54), 6 studies did not present statistical results on potential age differences. Five studies mentioned a significant difference in the distribution of men and women (28,38,49,55,56), 8 did not present statistical results on potential differences in sex. Seven studies also matched for years of education (30,34,35,(57)(58)(59)(60), in addition to age and sex.…”