The Medial Thalamus Plays an Important Role in the Cognitive and Emotional Modulation of Orofacial Pain: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging-Based Study

The thalamus plays a critical role in the perception of orofacial pain. We investigated neural mechanisms pain by exploring intrinsic functional alterations and assessing changes connectivity (FC) between thalamic subregions with significant other brain regions using seed-based FC approach. There were 49 participants group controls. Orofacial was caused orthodontic separators. resting-state magnetic resonance imaging data two groups analyzed to obtain fractional amplitude low-frequency fluctuations (fALFF) thalamus; fALFF abnormalities used as seeds for analysis. Student's t -tests comparisons. Pearson's correlation analysis performed SPM software. Forty-four (mean age, 21.0 ± 0.9 years; 24 women) age- sex-matched controls 2.6 27 finally included. Compared control group, demonstrated following: (1) increased function dorsal area decreased medial (2) 12 ( p < 0.05, family-wise error corrected, voxel > 100); (3) potential positive negative correlations thalamus-seeded visual analog scale score AlphaSim corrected). findings show that thalami play important roles perception, likely an cognitive emotional modulation