Key result
Neural synchrony in the pain connectome, particularly in beta and high-gamma bands, was significantly associated with chronic pain severity and reliably predicted individual pain levels.
Why the study?
Pain commonly co-occurs with psychological symptoms, but the neural synchrony patterns associated with this shared symptom burden remain incompletely understood.
Cross-Sectional (n=99)
No
Effect estimate: R² 0.40
Frequency-specific MEG neural synchrony patterns in the pain connectome may serve as potential neurophysiological markers for multidimensional symptom burden in chronic pain and co-occurring psychological conditions.
May mark multidimensional pain burden via MEG synchrony; hypothesis-generating and should not yet change practice.
Objective Pain commonly co-occurs with psychological symptoms, yet the neural synchrony patterns associated with this shared symptom burden remain incompletely understood. We examined whether frequency-specific neural synchrony is associated with pain severity and co-occurring psychological symptoms in a transdiagnostic military cohort with heterogeneous symptom presentations. Methods Resting-state magnetoencephalography data were acquired from military personnel and veterans exhibiting varying levels of pain, anxiety-, depression-, and PTSD-related symptoms. Frequency-specific neural synchrony was estimated between regions within literature-derived pain-relevant brain networks. Multivariate partial least squares regression was used to model associations between neural synchrony patterns and pain severity, as well as composite measures reflecting joint pain and psychological symptom burden. Results Pain severity was associated with distributed synchrony patterns, with the strongest associations observed in the beta and high-gamma frequency bands. Joint pain-anxiety symptom burden was primarily associated with theta- and gamma-band synchrony, whereas joint pain-depressive and pain-PTSD symptom burden showed predominant associations within the gamma band, with fewer beta-band effects. Across symptom domains, overlapping but frequency-specific synchrony patterns were identified across distributed brain networks. Conclusions Pain severity and co-occurring psychological symptoms are associated with partially overlapping, frequency-specific neural synchrony patterns involving distributed brain networks. Significance These findings support a network-level neurophysiological framework for understanding pain and psychological symptom co-occurrence and highlight frequency-specific MEG synchrony patterns as potential markers of multidimensional symptom burden. Highlights – MEG synchrony patterns associate with pain severity across beta and high-gamma bands – Pain-anxiety symptom burden links to theta- and gamma-band synchrony – Pain-depression and pain-PTSD burden show predominant gamma-band synchrony
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Ventresca et al. (2024) conducted a cross-sectional in Chronic pain and comorbid mental health conditions (anxiety, depression, PTSD) (n=99). Neural synchrony in the pain connectome was evaluated on Prediction of chronic pain severity using neural synchrony via partial least squares machine learning (R² 0.40). Neural synchrony in the pain connectome, particularly in beta and high-gamma bands, was significantly associated with chronic pain severity and reliably predicted individual pain levels.
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