Powers Jocelyn M, Ioachim Gabriela, Stroman Patrick W
Centre for Neuroscience Studies, Queen's University, Kingston, ON, Canada.
Department of Biomedical and Molecular Sciences, Queen's University, Kingston, ON, Canada.
Front Pain Res (Lausanne). 2022 May 19;3:878258. doi: 10.3389/fpain.2022.878258. eCollection 2022.
Pain is often viewed and studied as an isolated perception. However, cognition, emotion, salience effects, and autonomic and sensory input are all integrated to create a comprehensive experience. Music-induced analgesia has been used for thousands of years, with moderate behavioural effects on pain perception, yet the neural mechanisms remain ambiguous. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of music analgesia through individual ratings of pain, and changes in connectivity across a network of regions spanning the brain and brainstem that are involved in limbic, paralimbic, autonomic, cognitive, and sensory domains. This is the first study of its kind to assess the effects of music analgesia using complex network analyses in the human brain and brainstem. Functional MRI data were collected from 20 healthy men and women with concurrent presentation of noxious stimulation and music, in addition to control runs without music. Ratings of peak pain intensity and unpleasantness were collected for each run and were analysed in relation to the functional data. We found that music alters connectivity across these neural networks between regions such as the insula, thalamus, hypothalamus, amygdala and hippocampus (among others), and is impacted by individual pain sensitivity. While these differences are important for how we understand pain and analgesia, it is essential to note that these effects are variable across participants and provide moderate pain relief at best. Therefore, a therapeutic strategy involving music should use it as an adjunct to pain management in combination with healthy lifestyle changes and/or pharmaceutical intervention.
疼痛通常被视为一种孤立的感知并加以研究。然而，认知、情感、显著性效应以及自主神经和感觉输入都会整合起来，从而产生一种综合体验。音乐诱导镇痛已经使用了数千年，对疼痛感知有一定的行为影响，但其神经机制仍不明确。本研究的目的是通过个体疼痛评分以及涉及边缘系统、边缘旁系统、自主神经、认知和感觉领域的大脑和脑干区域网络连接性的变化，来研究音乐镇痛的效果。这是同类研究中首次使用复杂网络分析来评估人类大脑和脑干中音乐镇痛的效果。从20名健康男性和女性中收集功能磁共振成像数据，同时呈现有害刺激和音乐，此外还进行无音乐的对照实验。每次实验都收集峰值疼痛强度和不愉快程度的评分，并与功能数据进行分析。我们发现，音乐改变了脑岛、丘脑、下丘脑、杏仁核和海马体等区域之间这些神经网络的连接性，并且受到个体疼痛敏感性的影响。虽然这些差异对于我们理解疼痛和镇痛很重要，但必须注意的是，这些效应在参与者之间是可变的，充其量只能提供适度的疼痛缓解。因此，一种涉及音乐的治疗策略应该将其作为疼痛管理的辅助手段，与健康的生活方式改变和/或药物干预相结合。
