Abstract
Pain is a pervasive symptom in lung cancer patients during the onset of the disease. This study aims to investigate the connectivity disruption patterns of the whole-brain functional network in lung cancer patients with cancer pain (CP+). We constructed individual whole-brain, region of interest (ROI)-level functional connectivity (FC) networks for 50 CP+ patients, 34 lung cancer patients without pain-related complaints (CP−), and 31 matched healthy controls (HC). Then, a ROI-based FC analysis was used to determine the disruptions of FC among the three groups. The relationships between aberrant FCs and clinical parameters were also characterized. The ROI-based FC analysis demonstrated that hypo-connectivity was present both in CP+ and CP− patients compared to HC, which were particularly clustered in the somatomotor and ventral attention, frontoparietal control, and default mode modules. Notably, compared to CP− patients, CP+ patients had hyper-connectivity in several brain regions mainly distributed in the somatomotor and visual modules, suggesting these abnormal FC patterns may be significant for cancer pain. Moreover, CP+ patients also showed increased intramodular and intermodular connectivity strength of the functional network, which could be replicated in cancer stage IV and lung adenocarcinoma. Finally, abnormal FCs within the prefrontal cortex and somatomotor cortex were positively correlated with pain intensity and pain duration, respectively. These findings suggested that lung cancer patients with cancer pain had disrupted connectivity in the intrinsic brain functional network, which may be the underlying neuroimaging mechanisms.
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The study data presented may be made available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.
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The authors would like to acknowledge the staff of the Chongqing University Cancer Hospital for technical and administrative support, commentary, and advice. The authors also thank all the volunteers who participated in the study for their kind collaboration.
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This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number 82371937 and 82071883); the Natural Science Foundation of Chongqing (grant numbers cstc2021jcyj-msxmX0319 and cstc2021jcyj-msxmX0313); and the Natural Science Foundation of Chongqing (grant number CSTB2022NSCQ-MSX0396).
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X.W., D.L. & J.Z. designed research; X.W., Y.L. & X.L. contributed to the experiments and statistical analysis; Y.L., Y.T., J.Z., J.L., J.C., C.W., X.Z. & Y.T. contributed to MRI and clinical data collection. X.W. & D.L. contributed to the writing of the manuscript. D.L. & J.Z. provided guidance and advice. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.
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Wei, X., Lai, Y., Lan, X. et al. Uncovering brain functional connectivity disruption patterns of lung cancer-related pain. Brain Imaging and Behavior (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-023-00836-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-023-00836-9