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    Home > Active Ingredient News > Study of Nervous System > Study finds thalamo-cortical mechanism of nostalgic analgesia

    Study finds thalamo-cortical mechanism of nostalgic analgesia

    • Last Update: 2022-04-30
    • Source: Internet
    • Author: User
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    Nostalgia is a feeling of longing for the contained emotions of the past, a self-relevant, bittersweet but mostly positive social emotion
    .

    Previous studies have found that for individuals, nostalgia can relieve pain or increase pain tolerance
    .

    In the context of the potentially addictive nature of drug analgesia, non-drug analgesia (eg, nostalgia) has received increasing attention
    .

    Nostalgia has been shown to have analgesic effects, but the brain mechanisms behind it remain unknown
    .

    The research group of Kong Yazhuo and the research group of Cai Huajian cooperated with the Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences to reveal the neural mechanism of the analgesic effect of nostalgia
    .

    Pain involves multiple brain regions, among which the thalamus is a key relay station for transmitting and integrating nociceptive information
    .

    Functional connectivity analyses have found that prefrontal, parahippocampal, and brainstem structures are involved in the regulation of emotion when experiencing pain
    .

    While nostalgia is a complex emotion involving self, autobiographical memory, and reward, after experiencing nostalgia, the thalamus may integrate external signals (i.
    e.
    , nostalgic information) into the current mental state (i.
    e.
    , pain perception)
    .

    In turn, nostalgia may modulate pain through these top-down pathways
    .

    Based on these theories, the study used functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) technology, using whole-brain analysis, ROI analysis, PPI analysis, mediation analysis, etc.
    , to explore the changes in brain activity when healthy subjects experienced thermal pain after viewing nostalgic pictures
    .

    The results demonstrated the analgesic effect of nostalgia, discovered key brain regions encoding nostalgia, and elucidated the neural mechanism of nostalgia for analgesia
    .

    The study found that in the brain coding stage of nostalgia (i.
    e.
    , the cue stage), the prefrontal thalamus was involved in the coding of nostalgic states (the left of Figure B); in the stage of pain coding, the posterior parietal thalamus was involved in the coding of analgesia (the right of Figure B).

    .

    The brain activity of the prefrontal thalamus in the cue stage was positively correlated with the brain activity of the parietal thalamus after the pain stage (Figure B).
    In addition, PPI analysis found that there was a functional connection between the prefrontal thalamus and the PAG in the cue stage, and this functional connection was associated with nostalgia.
    Intensity was positively correlated (upper panel C); functional connectivity of the PAG-dlPFC was present in subsequent pain stages, and this functional connectivity was marginally significantly positively correlated with pain scores (lower panel C)
    .

    Mediation analysis found that nostalgia may reduce pain by enhancing thalamic activity during pain stages (Panel D)
    .

    Studies have shown that the thalamus, a key brain region that regulates pain, is also involved in nostalgia-related analgesia (Figure E)
    .

    Specifically, anterior parietal thalamic activation that encodes nostalgia predicts posterior parietal thalamic activation that encodes pain
    .

    At the same time, the thalamus modulates nociceptive inputs and plays a key role in triggering brainstem analgesic pathways
    .

    This study revealed the neural mechanism of nostalgic analgesia and provided new insights for the further development and improvement of non-pharmacological psychological analgesia
    .

    The relevant research results were published online in the Journal of Neuroscience
    .

    The research work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the National Social Science Foundation of China, and the Magnetic Resonance Imaging Research Center of the Institute of Psychology
    .

    Panel A: fMRI paradigm including viewing nostalgic pictures (cued phase) and receiving thermal pain stimuli (pain phase); Panel B: Significant correlation between brain activation and behavioral scores during cue and pain phase; Panel C: PPI analysis Figure D: mediation analysis Figure E: thalamic central pathway model for nostalgic analgesia Source: Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
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