Lab for Clinical & Integrative Neuroscience, School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, The University of Texas at Dallas, USA.
Department of Surgical Sciences, Section of Neurosurgery, Dunedin School of Medicine, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand.
Prog Neuropsychopharmacol Biol Psychiatry. 2018 Jun 8;84(Pt A):79-92. doi: 10.1016/j.pnpbp.2018.01.025. Epub 2018 Feb 2.
Distress is a domain-general behavioral symptom whose neural correlates have been under investigation for a long time now. Although some studies suggest that distress is encoded by changes in alpha activity and functional connectivity between specific brain regions, no study that we know has delved into the whole brain temporal dynamics of the distress component. In the current study, we compare the changes in the mean and variance of functional connectivity and small-worldness parameter over 3 min of resting state EEG to analyze the fluctuation in transient stable states, and network structure. On comparing these measures between healthy controls and patients experiencing low and high levels of distress due to a continuous ringing in the ear (tinnitus), we observe an increase in fluctuation between transient stable states characterized by an increase in both variance of functional connectivity and the small-worldness parameter. This results in a possible increase in degrees of freedom leading to a paradoxical equilibrium of the network structure in highly distressed patients. This may also be interpreted as a maladaptive compensation to look for information in order to reduce the hyper-salience in highly distressed individuals. In addition, this is correlated with the amount of distress only in the high distress tinnitus group, suggesting a catastrophic breakdown of the brain's resilience. Distress not only accompanies tinnitus, but other disorders such as somatic disorders, fibromyalgia, post-traumatic stress disorder, etc. Since the current study focuses on a disorder-general distress symptom, the methods and results of the current study have a wide application in different neuropathologies.
痛苦是一种普遍的行为症状，其神经相关性一直是研究的热点。虽然一些研究表明，痛苦是由特定脑区的 alpha 活动和功能连接变化来编码的，但我们所知的没有一项研究深入探讨了痛苦成分的全脑时间动态。在当前的研究中，我们比较了静息态 EEG 中 3 分钟内功能连接和小世界参数的均值和方差的变化，以分析瞬态稳定状态和网络结构的波动。在将这些测量值与由于耳朵持续鸣响（耳鸣）而经历低水平和高水平痛苦的健康对照组和患者进行比较时，我们观察到瞬态稳定状态之间波动的增加，其特征是功能连接方差和小世界参数都增加。这导致自由度的增加，从而导致高度痛苦患者的网络结构出现悖论平衡。这也可以解释为一种适应不良的补偿，以寻找信息，以减少高度痛苦个体的超敏度。此外，这与高痛苦耳鸣组的痛苦程度仅相关，表明大脑弹性的灾难性崩溃。痛苦不仅伴随着耳鸣，还伴随着其他疾病，如躯体疾病、纤维肌痛、创伤后应激障碍等。由于当前的研究侧重于一般痛苦症状，因此当前研究的方法和结果在不同的神经病理学中有广泛的应用。
