Individual variability in brain representations of pain

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Pain Research
• Individual Differences

Background:

• Personalized pain medicine requires understanding individual variability in pain processing.
• Cerebral contributions to this variability remain largely uncharacterized.

Purpose of the Study:

• Identify brain regions with high versus low interindividual variability in their relationship with pain.
• Characterize the cerebral sources of individual differences in pain processing.

Main Methods:

• Trained idiographic pain-predictive models using functional MRI (fMRI) data from 404 participants (discovery set).
• Quantified voxel-level importance for individualized pain prediction.
• Examined interindividual variability of pain-predictive weights in 21 identified brain regions.
• Replicated findings in an independent dataset of 124 participants.

Main Results:

• Higher-order transmodal brain regions (e.g., ventromedial/ventrolateral prefrontal cortex) exhibited greater individual variability in pain representation.
• Unimodal brain regions (e.g., somatomotor cortex) demonstrated more stable pain representations across individuals.
• Identified specific brain regions contributing to individual differences in pain processing.

Conclusions:

• This study reveals distinct patterns of brain variability in pain processing between higher-order and unimodal regions.
• Findings provide potential neurobiological targets for personalized pain assessment and treatment strategies.
• Advances understanding of the neural basis for individual differences in pain perception.