ArticleThe Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience2020
Mesocorticolimbic Pathways Encode Cue-Based Expectancy Effects on Pain.
Article in The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed, 35 citations in OpenAlex.
- Domain-General Neural Effects of Associative Learning and Expectations on Pain and Hedonic Taste Perception.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Trial
- Review
- Brain mechanisms of pain anticipation in chronic low back pain: Insights into phenotypical responses to mind-body therapy.The journal of pain · 2026Article
- Article
- A mesocortical glutamatergic pathway modulates neuropathic pain independent of dopamine co-release.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Prediction and action in cortical pain processing.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2023Article
- Placebo and nocebo effects: from observation to harnessing and clinical application.Translational psychiatry · 2022Review
- Reward learning in the development and maintenance of chronic back pain.Cell reports. Medicine · 2022Article
- Temporal-spectral signaling of sensory information and expectations in the cerebral processing of pain.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Evidence for Integration of Cognitive, Affective, and Autonomic Influences During the Experience of Acute Pain in Healthy Human Volunteers.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2022Article
- Music to My Senses: Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Evidence of Music Analgesia Across Connectivity Networks Spanning the Brain and Brainstem.Frontiers in pain research (Lausanne, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Multidimensional Pain Modulation by Acupuncture Analgesia: The Reward Effect of Acupuncture on Pain Relief.Evidence-based complementary and alternative medicine : eCAM · 2022Review
- How expectations of pain elicited by consciously and unconsciously perceived cues unfold over time.NeuroImage · 2021Article
- Test-retest reliability of laser evoked pain perception and fMRI BOLD responses.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- The Distinct Functions of Dopaminergic Receptors on Pain Modulation: A Narrative Review.Neural plasticity · 2021Review
- Dopaminergic Projections From the Ventral Tegmental Area to the Nucleus Accumbens Modulate Sevoflurane Anesthesia in Mice.Frontiers in cellular neuroscience · 2021Article
- Immediate Analgesic Effect of Acupuncture in Patients With Primary Dysmenorrhea: A fMRI Study.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2021Article
- A mutant vesicular stomatitis virus with reduced cytotoxicity and enhanced anterograde trans-synaptic efficiency.Molecular brain · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Expectation interacting with nociceptive input can shape the perception of pain. It has been suggested that reward-related expectations are associated with the activation of the ventral tegmental area (VTA), which projects to the striatum (e.g., nucleus accumbens [NAc]) and prefrontal cortex (e.g., rostral anterior cingulate cortex [rACC]). However, the role of these projection pathways in encoding expectancy effects on pain remains unclear. In this study, we leveraged a visual cue conditioning paradigm with a long pain anticipation period and collected magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data from 30 healthy human subjects (14 females). At the within-subject level, whole-brain functional connectivity (FC) analyses showed that the mesocortical pathway (VTA-rACC FC) and the mesolimbic pathway (VTA-NAc FC) were enhanced with positive expectation but inhibited with negative expectation during pain anticipation period. Mediation analyses revealed that cue-based expectancy effects on pain were mainly mediated by the VTA-NAc FC, and structural equation modeling showed that VTA-based FC influenced pain perception by modulating pain-evoked brain responses. At the between-subject level, multivariate pattern analyses demonstrated that gray matter volumes in the VTA, NAc, and rACC were able to predict the magnitudes of conditioned pain responses associated with positive and/or negative expectations across subjects. Our results therefore advance the current understanding of how the reward system is linked to the interaction between expectation and pain. Furthermore, they provide precise functional and structural information on mesocorticolimibic pathways that encode within-subject and between-subject variability of expectancy effects on pain.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.