DMN deactivation: A possible neuroimaging biomarker of subjective pain intensity

Abstract

In traditional task-related fMRI studies, the role of BOLD deactivation was often neglected due to the ongoing debate on whether negative BOLD response reflects decreased neuronal activity or blood steeling effect (Noam Harel et al.,2002), which is also the case in pain studies. However, there is evidence suggesting that negative BOLD response elicited by pain stimulus can play an important role at least in the case of chronic pain (Iannetti et al.,2005; Kong et al.,2010). By comparing BOLD responses induced by heat stimuli at two different temperatures, Kong et al. observed that, in contrast to the relationship between pain intensity and BOLD activation, both the spatial extent and intensity of negative BOLD responses in DMN decrease as the pain intensity increase. In this study, we aimed at exploring the relationship between DMN deactivation and pain perception elicited by laser heat pulse .....