AUTHOR=Garza-Villarreal Eduardo A., Jiang Zhiguo , Vuust Peter , Alcauter Sarael , Vase Lene , Pasaye Erick , Cavazos-Rodriguez Roberto , Brattico Elvira , Jensen Troels S., Barrios Fernando A.

TITLE=Music reduces pain and increases resting state fMRI BOLD signal amplitude in the left angular gyrus in fibromyalgia patients

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=6

YEAR=2015

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01051

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01051

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=<p>Music reduces pain in fibromyalgia (FM), a chronic pain disease, but the functional neural correlates of music-induced analgesia (MIA) are still largely unknown. We recruited FM patients (<italic>n</italic> = 22) who listened to their preferred relaxing music and an auditory control (pink noise) for 5 min without external noise from fMRI image acquisition. Resting state fMRI was then acquired before and after the music and control conditions. A significant increase in the amplitude of low frequency fluctuations of the BOLD signal was evident in the left angular gyrus (lAnG) after listening to music, which in turn, correlated to the analgesia reports. The <italic>post-hoc</italic> seed-based functional connectivity analysis of the lAnG showed found higher connectivity after listening to music with right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (rdlPFC), the left caudate (lCau), and decreased connectivity with right anterior cingulate cortex (rACC), right supplementary motor area (rSMA), precuneus and right precentral gyrus (rPreG). Pain intensity (PI) analgesia was correlated (<italic>r</italic> = 0.61) to the connectivity of the lAnG with the rPreG. Our results show that MIA in FM is related to top-down regulation of the pain modulatory network by the default mode network (DMN).</p>