UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO
Department of Psychiatry
Fifth Annual Research Forum – Extravaganza 2014
POSTER TITLE
Hypoactivation of Key Emotion Processing Regions during Facial Affect Perception in
Chronic Pain Patients
DISEASE/KEY
WORDS:
Chronic Pain, Amygdala, Emotion perception
AUTHORS:
Victor Patron, M.D.1, Emily Neuchterlain, B.S.2, Tiffany Love, Ph.D.2, K. Luan Phan,
M.D., Ph.D.1,2,3, Sara Weisenbach, Ph.D.1,2,3, Jon-Kar Zubieta, M.D., Ph.D.2
1.
University of Illinois at Chicago, Department of Psychiatry, Mood & Anxiety Disorders Program
2.
University of Michigan Medical School, Department of Psychiatry
3.
Jesse Brown VA Medical Center, Research & Development Program, Mental Health Program
MENTEE
CATEGORY:
Research staff
RESEARCH MENTOR:
Sara Weisenbach, PhD
BACKGROUND:
It is known that depression interferes with emotion related tasks, such as facial
emotion perception. Depression and chronic pain are often comorbid, and with some
known common neural underpinnings, such as disruption to serotonergic and
dopaminergic pathways. Understanding how patients with chronic pain process facial
emotions may further elucidate common neurobiological and phenomenological
substrates of the two disorders. The primary aim of this study was to identify
patterns of brain activation during processing of facial emotions among patients with
chronic pain, relative to healthy comparisons.
METHODS:
13 non-depressed patients with chronic non-neuropathic lower back pain and 13
healthy comparisons underwent fMRI while performing a facial emotion matching
task. The primary contrast of interest was activation during face emotion matching
relative to shape matching. Group analyses with were conducted for a contrast
of face emotion versus shape matching using SPM8 and unpaired t tests.
AlphaSim correction (1000 iterations) was used for all whole brain analyses,
balancing height (p < .0.003) and extent (62 mm3) thresholds to achieve a
whole brain correction of p < .05. Small volume correction was performed for
an amygdala ROI analysis. Activation values were extracted from regions for which
RESULTS:
there was a significant group effect and correlated with affective and pain
questionnaires in the chronic pain group only.
Chronic pain patients demonstrated hypoactivation during facial emotion
presentations, relative to the healthy control group, in regions centrally involved in
emotion processing, including prefrontal cortex, right cingulate cortex, left superior
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO
Department of Psychiatry
CONCLUSIONS:
temporal gyrus, and ventral basal ganglia, bilaterally. Clinical pain intensity scores
were positively correlated with cingulate cortex activity , while fatigue scores showed
negative correlations with basal ganglia activation during emotion processing in
chronic non-neuropathic pain patients.
Chronic back pain patients show hypoactivation in key areas related to emotion. This
is the opposite effect of what has generally been found among depressed patients,
who demonstrate hyperactivation, relative to their non-depressed peers.
Hypoactivation in the basal ganglia appear to be associated with self-reported fatigue
ratings, while prefrontal cortex activity was related to clinical pain intensity ratings.
These results show that chronic pain is associated with alterations in emotion
processing that differ to those encountered in typical studies examining Major
Depression and were further associated with clinical pain measures.