"Brain signatures" as objective measures of acute pain have been characterized with
functional magnetic resonance image and machine learning technology. As compared to acute
pain, chronic pain leads to greater socioeconomic burden. However, measures for chronic pain
remain subjective and suboptimal, and the brain signatures for chronic pain are largely
unknown. Chronic migraine and fibromyalgia are two prototypes primary chronic pain disorders
with high disability and intractability with prevalence of around 2% for both diseases. These
two chronic pain disorders have shared clinical presentations (abnormal pain sensitivity,
mood and sleep disorders), pathophysiology (central sensitization) and medical treatment
(anti-depressants), despite different body parts are involved (head vs. whole body). The
present integrated project aims to characterize both common and disease-specific brain
signatures of chronic pain by investigating these two chronic pain disorders. Our findings
may shed some light on the key mechanisms of pain chronification, and may pave the way for
the optimization of diagnosis and prognostication, as well as formulation of personalized
medicine in chronic pain, so as to improve life quality of these patients and to reduce
socioeconomic loss.
The present project includes three interdisciplinary sub-projects (plus one animal study, not
listed here):
A: Clinical studies for chronic migraine and fibromyalgia: endophenotypes and pain
chronification B: Functional neuroimaging of chronic pain: multimodal quantitative analysis
of brain connectomes C. Data stream mining technology for multimodal physiological signals of
chronic pain: real-time tracking and clinical correlation
The specific aims of the present projects include:
1. Identification of common and disease-specific brain signatures for chronic pain
(sub-projects A, B, C)
2. Investigation of clinical indicators with predictive values by machine learning analysis
of big data (sub-projects A, B, C)
3. Elucidation of the specific anatomical structures or neural networks underpinning pain
chronification based on clinical neuroimaging (sub-projects A, B) In this 1st-year pilot
study of the 4-year longitudinal study, we will establish experimental platforms for
each sub-project, start to recruit participants and perform endophenotyping, as well as
have a preliminary integration for sub-projects A, B and C.