Enhanced neural synchrony associated with long-term ballroom dance training.

Long-term dance training offers numerous benefits, including improvements in physical health, posture, body coordination, and mental health and well-being. Since dance is an art form of body-to-body communication, professional dancers may share feelings and thoughts on dance with their partners, owing to their shared training experiences. Considering this perspective, one may expect that professional dancers would demonstrate pronounced neural similarities when viewing dancing videos, which could be associated with their training duration. To test these hypotheses, we collected functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data while presenting ballroom dancing and neutral video clips with long durations (∼100 s each) to 41 professional ballroom dancers (19 pairs of dance partners) and 39 age- and sex-matched nondancers. Our findings revealed that dancers exhibited broader and stronger neural similarities across the whole brain when watching dancing video clips, as compared to the control group. These increased neural similarities could be interpreted in at least two distinct ways. First, neural similarities in certain brain regions within the motor control circuit (i.e., frontal cortical-basal ganglia-thalamic circuit) were significantly correlated with dance-related information (e.g., dance partners' cooperation duration), which reinforced the impact of long-term dance training on neural synchronization. Second, neural similarities in other brain regions (e.g., memory-related brain regions) were significantly correlated with subjects' impression of the viewed videos (i.e., whether they have watched before, familiarity, and liking), which may not necessarily be directly linked to long-term dance training. Altogether, our study provided solid evidence for synchronized neural mechanisms in professional dancers due to long-term dance training.

[Spinal cord magnetic resonance imaging: methods and applications].

Spinal cord magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is an advanced imaging technique (mainly in the cervical cord) and has been gradually used in basic scientific research such as human sensation and motor function, and clinical applications such as spinal cord injury, myelitis, and chronic pain, etc. The development of spinal cord MRI is still at the early stage compared with brain MRI and limited by the current MRI technology and data analysis methods. This review focuses on the methods and applications of spinal cord MRI technology in the basic research fields of cognitive neuroscience and clinical application. Firstly, we will introduce the imaging principle, methods, measurement standards, and applications of most commonly used multimodal spinal cord MRI techniques, including quantitative spinal cord MRI (such as structural, diffusion, spectroscopy, myelin water, magnetization transfer, and chemical exchange saturation transfer imaging, etc.) and spinal functional MRI (fMRI). Secondly, we will discuss the technical challenges and possible solutions of spinal cord MRI data processing from the three dimensions of denoising, data processing pipeline optimization, and repeatability and reliability. Finally, we will discuss the application status and development prospects of spinal cord MRI.

[Central neural mechanism of increased pain sensitivity induced by nicotine abstinence].

Nicotine is the main addictive component in cigarettes that motivates dependence on tobacco use for smokers and makes it difficult to quit through regulating a variety of neurotransmitter release and receptor activations in the brain. Even though nicotine has an analgesic effect, clinical studies demonstrated that nicotine abstinence reduces pain threshold and increases pain sensitivity in smoking individuals. The demand for opioid analgesics in nicotine abstinent patients undergoing surgery has greatly increased, which results in many side effects, such as nausea, vomiting, and respiratory depression, etc. In addition, these side effects would hinder patients' physical and psychological recovery. Therefore, identifying the neural mechanism of the increase of pain sensitivity induced by nicotine abstinence and deriving a way to cope with the increased demand for postoperative analgesics would have enormous basic and clinical implications. In this review, we first discussed different experimental pain stimuli (e.g., cold, heat, and mechanical pain)-induced pain sensitivity changes after a period of nicotine dependence/abstinence from both animal and human studies. Then, we summarized the effects of the brain neurotransmitter release (e.g., serotonin, norepinephrine, endogenous opioids, dopamine, and γ-aminobutyric acid) and their corresponding receptor activation changes after nicotine abstinence on pain sensitivity. Finally, we discussed the limits in recent studies. We proposed that more attention should be paid to human studies, especially studies among chronic pain patients, and functional magnetic resonance imaging might be a useful tool to reveal the mechanisms of abstinence-induced pain sensitivity changes. Besides, considering the influence of duration of nicotine dependence/abstinence and gender on pain sensitivity, we proposed that the effects of nicotine abstinence and individual differences (e.g., duration of abstinence from smoking, chronic/acute abstinence, and gender) on abstinence-induced pain sensitivity should be fully considered in formulating pain treatment protocols. In summary, this paper could deepen our understanding of nicotine abstinence-induced pain sensitivity changes and its underlying neural mechanism, and could also provide effective scientific theories to guide clinical pain diagnosis and treatment, which has important clinical significance.

Selective and replicable neuroimaging-based indicators of pain discriminability.

Neural indicators of pain discriminability have far-reaching theoretical and clinical implications but have been largely overlooked previously. Here, to directly identify the neural basis of pain discriminability, we apply signal detection theory to three EEG (Datasets 1-3, total N = 366) and two fMRI (Datasets 4-5, total N = 399) datasets where participants receive transient stimuli of four sensory modalities (pain, touch, audition, and vision) and two intensities (high and low) and report perceptual ratings. Datasets 1 and 4 are used for exploration and others for validation. We find that most pain-evoked EEG and fMRI brain responses robustly encode pain discriminability, which is well replicated in validation datasets. The neural indicators are also pain selective since they cannot track tactile, auditory, or visual discriminability, even though perceptual ratings and sensory discriminability are well matched between modalities. Overall, we provide compelling evidence that pain-evoked brain responses can serve as replicable and selective neural indicators of pain discriminability.

Changes in brain connectivity linked to multisensory processing of pain modulation in migraine with acupuncture treatment.

Migraine without aura (MWoA) is a major neurological disorder with unsatisfactory adherence to current medications. Acupuncture has emerged as a promising method for treating MWoA. However, the brain mechanism underlying acupuncture is yet unclear. The present study aimed to examine the effects of acupuncture in regulating brain connectivity of the key regions in pain modulation. In this study, MWoA patients were recruited and randomly assigned to 4 weeks of real or sham acupuncture. Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data were collected before and after the treatment. A modern neuroimaging literature meta-analysis of 515 fMRI studies was conducted to identify pain modulation-related key regions as regions of interest (ROIs). Seed-to-voxel resting state-functional connectivity (rsFC) method and repeated-measures two-way analysis of variance were conducted to determine the interaction effects between the two groups and time (baseline and post-treatment). The changes in rsFC were evaluated between baseline and post-treatment in real and sham acupuncture groups, respectively. Clinical data at baseline and post-treatment were also recorded in order to determine between-group differences in clinical outcomes as well as correlations between rsFC changes and clinical effects. 40 subjects were involved in the final analysis. The current study demonstrated significant improvement in real acupuncture vs sham acupuncture on headache severity (monthly migraine days), headache impact (6-item Headache Impact Test), and health-related quality of life (Migraine-Specific Quality of Life Questionnaire). Five pain modulation-related key regions, including the right amygdala (AMYG), left insula (INS), left medial orbital superior frontal gyrus (PFCventmed), left middle occipital gyrus (MOG), and right middle cingulate cortex (MCC), were selected based on the meta-analysis on brain imaging studies. This study found that 1) after acupuncture treatment, migraine patients of the real acupuncture group showed significantly enhanced connectivity in the right AMYG/MCC-left MTG and the right MCC-right superior temporal gyrus (STG) compared to that of the sham acupuncture group; 2) negative correlations were established between clinical effects and increased rsFC in the right AMYG/MCC-left MTG; 3) baseline right AMYG-left MTG rsFC predicts monthly migraine days reduction after treatment. The current results suggested that acupuncture may concurrently regulate the rsFC of two pain modulation regions in the AMYG and MCC. MTG and STG may be the key nodes linked to multisensory processing of pain modulation in migraine with acupuncture treatment. These findings highlighted the potential of acupuncture for migraine management and the mechanisms underlying the modulation effects.

Exercise for Neuropathic Pain: A Systematic Review and Expert Consensus.

Background: Neuropathic pain (NP), a severe and disruptive symptom following many diseases, normally restricts patients' physical functions and leads to anxiety and depression. As an economical and effective therapy, exercise may be helpful in NP management. However, few guidelines and reviews focused on exercise therapy for NP associated with specific diseases. The study aimed to summarize the effectiveness and efficacy of exercise for various diseases with NP supported by evidence, describe expert recommendations for NP from different causes, and inform policymakers of the guidelines. Design: A systematic review and expert consensus. Methods: A systematic search was conducted in PubMed. We included systematic review and meta-analysis, randomized controlled trials (RCTs), which assessed patients with NP. Studies involved exercise intervention and outcome included pain intensity at least. Physiotherapy Evidence Database and the Assessment of Multiple Systematic reviews tool were used to grade the quality assessment of the included RCTs and systematic reviews, respectively. The final grades of recommendation were based on strength of evidence and a consensus discussion of results of Delphi rounds by the Delphi consensus panel including 21 experts from the Chinese Association of Rehabilitation Medicine. Results: Eight systematic reviews and 21 RCTs fulfilled all of the inclusion criteria and were included, which were used to create the 10 evidence-based consensus statements. The 10 expert recommendations regarding exercise for NP symptoms were relevant to the following 10 different diseases: spinal cord injury, stroke, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, cervical radiculopathy, sciatica, diabetic neuropathy, chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy, HIV/AIDS, and surgery, respectively. The exercise recommended in the expert consensus involved but was not limited to muscle stretching, strengthening/resistance exercise, aerobic exercise, motor control/stabilization training and mind-body exercise (Tai Chi and yoga). Conclusions: Based on the available evidence, exercise is helpful to alleviate NP intensity. Therefore, these expert consensuses recommend that proper exercise programs can be considered as an effective alternative treatment or complementary therapy for most patients with NP. The expert consensus provided medical staff and policymakers with applicable recommendations for the formulation of exercise prescription for NP. This consensus statement will require regular updates after five-ten years.