제목: Dynamic functional brain reconfiguration during sustained pain

연사: 우충완 교수님 (IBS Center for Neuroscience Imaging Research, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University)

일시: 2022년 10월 26일 (수요일) 오후 4시

초록: Pain is not just a simple reflex to nociceptive input, but it is rather constructed through complex interactions among multiple brain systems over time. However, it remains poorly understood how the patterns of functional brain connectivity dynamically change over the period of experiencing sustained pain. In this talk, I will introduce functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) studies in which we tried to understand the dynamic changes in functional brain connectivity and its community structures while participants were experiencing tonic pain. The results suggest that the top-down cognitive and affective regulatory brain systems are important for explaining tonic pain experience, and particularly the fronto-parietal network serves as a flexible hub modulating both the early attention to pain and also late regulation of pain, playing key roles in orchestrating multiple brain networks during sustained pain. Overall, our findings provide new insight into how dynamic interactions among multiple brain systems construct and process pain experiences over time, which could potentially advance our mechanistic understanding of sustained and clinical pain.