The Affiliated Stomatological Hospital of Nanchang University, The Key Laboratory of Oral Biomedicine, Nanchang, China.
Department of Ophthalmology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University, Jiangxi Branch of National Clinical Research Center for Ocular Disease, Nanchang, China.
Brain Behav. 2023 Apr;13(4):e2937. doi: 10.1002/brb3.2937. Epub 2023 Mar 19.
Previous studies have indicated that pain-related diseases can result in significant functional alterations in the brain. However, differences in spontaneous brain activity in toothache (TA) patients remain unclear.
To investigate altered spontaneous brain activity in patients with TA and its underlying mechanisms using the resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging-fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (rsfMRI-fALFF) technique.
Twelve patients with TA and 12 non-toothache controls (NTCs) (matched for sex, age, and level of education) were enrolled. Spontaneous cerebral activity variations were investigated using the rsfMRI-fALFF technique in all individuals. The mean fALFF values of the TA patients and NTCs were classified using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. The correlations between fALFF signals of distinct brain regions and clinical manifestations of TA patients were evaluated using Pearson's correlation analysis.
TA patients showed lower fALFF values in the left superior frontal gyrus, medial; right superior frontal gyrus, dorsolateral; and left median cingulate and paracingulate gyri (LDCG) than the NTCs. Moreover, ROC curve analysis indicated that the area under the curve of each cerebral region studied had high accuracy. Besides, in the TA group, the visual analog scale score was negatively correlated with fALFF signal values of the LDCG (r = .962, p < .001).
Abnormal spontaneous activity was detected in numerous brain regions in patients with TA, which may be valuable for understanding the brain processing mechanism underlying TA. These regional changes in brain activity may serve as effective clinical indicators of TA.
先前的研究表明，与疼痛相关的疾病会导致大脑的功能发生显著改变。然而，牙痛（TA）患者的自发性脑活动差异尚不清楚。
使用静息态功能磁共振成像-低频振幅（rsfMRI-fALFF）技术，研究 TA 患者自发脑活动的改变及其潜在机制。
纳入 12 名 TA 患者和 12 名非牙痛对照者（匹配性别、年龄和教育程度）。对所有个体均采用 rsfMRI-fALFF 技术研究自发性脑活动变化。使用受试者工作特征（ROC）曲线对 TA 患者和 NTCs 的平均 fALFF 值进行分类。使用 Pearson 相关分析评估不同脑区的 fALFF 信号与 TA 患者临床表现之间的相关性。
与 NTCs 相比，TA 患者左额上回、内侧；右额上回、背外侧；左中央扣带回和旁扣带回（LDCG）的 fALFF 值较低。此外，ROC 曲线分析表明，所研究的每个脑区的曲线下面积具有较高的准确性。此外，在 TA 组中，视觉模拟评分与 LDCG 的 fALFF 信号值呈负相关（r=-.962，p<.001）。
TA 患者存在多个脑区的自发性活动异常，这可能有助于理解 TA 的大脑处理机制。这些脑活动的区域变化可能是 TA 的有效临床指标。
