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Dissociable Neural Mechanisms Underlying the Modulation of Pain and Anxiety? An fMRI Pilot Study
The down-regulation of pain through beliefs is commonly discussed as a form of emotion regulation. In line with this interpretation, the analgesic effect has been shown to co-occur with reduced anxiety and increased activity in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC), which is a key region of em...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2014
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4266493/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25502237 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0110654 |
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author | Wiech, Katja Edwards, Robert Moseley, Graham Lorimer Berna, Chantal Ploner, Markus Tracey, Irene |
author_facet | Wiech, Katja Edwards, Robert Moseley, Graham Lorimer Berna, Chantal Ploner, Markus Tracey, Irene |
author_sort | Wiech, Katja |
collection | PubMed |
description | The down-regulation of pain through beliefs is commonly discussed as a form of emotion regulation. In line with this interpretation, the analgesic effect has been shown to co-occur with reduced anxiety and increased activity in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC), which is a key region of emotion regulation. This link between pain and anxiety modulation raises the question whether the two effects are rooted in the same neural mechanism. In this pilot fMRI study, we compared the neural basis of the analgesic and anxiolytic effect of two types of threat modulation: a “behavioral control” paradigm, which involves the ability to terminate a noxious stimulus, and a “safety signaling” paradigm, which involves visual cues that signal the threat (or absence of threat) that a subsequent noxious stimulus might be of unusually high intensity. Analgesia was paralleled by VLPFC activity during behavioral control. Safety signaling engaged elements of the descending pain control system, including the rostral anterior cingulate cortex that showed increased functional connectivity with the periaqueductal gray and VLPFC. Anxiety reduction, in contrast, scaled with dorsolateral prefrontal cortex activation during behavioral control but had no distinct neural signature during safety signaling. Our pilot data therefore suggest that analgesic and anxiolytic effects are instantiated in distinguishable neural mechanisms and differ between distinct stress- and pain-modulatory approaches, supporting the recent notion of multiple pathways subserving top-down modulation of the pain experience. Additional studies in larger cohorts are needed to follow up on these preliminary findings. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4266493 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2014 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-42664932014-12-26 Dissociable Neural Mechanisms Underlying the Modulation of Pain and Anxiety? An fMRI Pilot Study Wiech, Katja Edwards, Robert Moseley, Graham Lorimer Berna, Chantal Ploner, Markus Tracey, Irene PLoS One Research Article The down-regulation of pain through beliefs is commonly discussed as a form of emotion regulation. In line with this interpretation, the analgesic effect has been shown to co-occur with reduced anxiety and increased activity in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC), which is a key region of emotion regulation. This link between pain and anxiety modulation raises the question whether the two effects are rooted in the same neural mechanism. In this pilot fMRI study, we compared the neural basis of the analgesic and anxiolytic effect of two types of threat modulation: a “behavioral control” paradigm, which involves the ability to terminate a noxious stimulus, and a “safety signaling” paradigm, which involves visual cues that signal the threat (or absence of threat) that a subsequent noxious stimulus might be of unusually high intensity. Analgesia was paralleled by VLPFC activity during behavioral control. Safety signaling engaged elements of the descending pain control system, including the rostral anterior cingulate cortex that showed increased functional connectivity with the periaqueductal gray and VLPFC. Anxiety reduction, in contrast, scaled with dorsolateral prefrontal cortex activation during behavioral control but had no distinct neural signature during safety signaling. Our pilot data therefore suggest that analgesic and anxiolytic effects are instantiated in distinguishable neural mechanisms and differ between distinct stress- and pain-modulatory approaches, supporting the recent notion of multiple pathways subserving top-down modulation of the pain experience. Additional studies in larger cohorts are needed to follow up on these preliminary findings. Public Library of Science 2014-12-15 /pmc/articles/PMC4266493/ /pubmed/25502237 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0110654 Text en © 2014 Wiech et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Wiech, Katja Edwards, Robert Moseley, Graham Lorimer Berna, Chantal Ploner, Markus Tracey, Irene Dissociable Neural Mechanisms Underlying the Modulation of Pain and Anxiety? An fMRI Pilot Study |
title | Dissociable Neural Mechanisms Underlying the Modulation of Pain and Anxiety? An fMRI Pilot Study |
title_full | Dissociable Neural Mechanisms Underlying the Modulation of Pain and Anxiety? An fMRI Pilot Study |
title_fullStr | Dissociable Neural Mechanisms Underlying the Modulation of Pain and Anxiety? An fMRI Pilot Study |
title_full_unstemmed | Dissociable Neural Mechanisms Underlying the Modulation of Pain and Anxiety? An fMRI Pilot Study |
title_short | Dissociable Neural Mechanisms Underlying the Modulation of Pain and Anxiety? An fMRI Pilot Study |
title_sort | dissociable neural mechanisms underlying the modulation of pain and anxiety? an fmri pilot study |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4266493/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25502237 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0110654 |
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