Spontaneous Brain Activity Of Patients With Bone Metastases Pain:a Clinical Research

Objective:To study the pain-related baseline brain activity fluctuation of bone metastases pain patients with the method of amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation(ALFF) of resting-state functional MRI.Materials and Methods:10patients with pain of bone metastases and10matched non-pain lung cancer patients and control group of volunteers were tested in our study. The MRI machine was Siemens1.5T scanner. BOLD sequence was used for the resting-state. The data preprocessing was performed using SPM8, the ALFF analysis was performed using REST software. A two-sample t-test was used to examine the differences of ALFF between the metastases pain group and the control group, and the xjView software was used to view the results and the anatomical locations of the ALFF differences between the two groups.and the MRIcroN soft was used to display the results.Results:There were significant differences of ALFF [P<0.005, uncorrected, cluster>405mm3(fifteen voxels)] between the groups. Compared with the group of patients with non-pain lung cancer, Areas showing increased ALFF in the bone metastases pain group included the anterior cingulate gyrus> medial frontal gyrus、left occipital lobe and precuneus;Some brain areas showed decreased ALFF in bone metastases pain subjects, these areas included middle temporal gyrus、middle occipital gyrus、lingual gyrus and right superior frontal gyrus;Compared with the volunteer group,Areas showing increased ALFF in the bone metastases pain group included anterior cingulate gyrus、medial frontal gyrus、superior frontal gyrus;Some brain areas showed decreased ALFF in bone metastases pain subjects, these areas included posterior cingulate gyrus、inferior frontal gyrus、middle temporal gyrus and lingual gyrus Conclusion:This is first study that revealed the changed baseline neuronal activity of spontaneous pain in bone metastases pain subjects, showed that sustained spontaneous pain stimulus may lead to changes in baseline brain activity. Our current study demonstrated the approach that combined resting-state fMRI and ALFF analysis is a reliable and robust way to study changes in baseline brain activity of metastases pain subjects.