ArticleFrontiers in neuroscience2025
Exploratory study on the ascending pain pathway in patients with chronic neck and shoulder pain based on combined brain and spinal cord diffusion tensor imaging.
Article in Frontiers in neuroscience, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Connectomic Mapping of Chronic Musculoskeletal Pain: Neural Circuitries Identified Through a Systematic Review and ALE Meta-Analysis.Neural plasticity · 2026Pooled it
- Methodological Evolution of Diffusion MRI in Chronic Pain: A Narrative Review.Journal of pain research · 2026Review
- Abnormal lymphatic system function in patients with chronic neck and shoulder pain: neuroimaging evidence from DTI-ALPS.Frontiers in molecular neuroscience · 2026Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Objective: To explore the changes in the white matter microstructure of the ascending pain conduction pathways in patients with chronic neck and shoulder pain (CNSP) using combined brain and spinal cord diffusion tensor imaging techniques, and to assess its correlation with clinical indicators and cognitive functions. Materials and methods: A 3.0T MRI scanner was used to perform combined brain and spinal cord diffusion tensor imaging scans on 31 CNSP patients and 24 healthy controls (HCs), extracting the spinothalamic tract (STT) and quantitatively analyzing the fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusivity (MD) which reflect the microstructural integrity of nerve fibers. Additionally, these differences were subjected to partial correlation analysis in relation to Visual Analog Scale (VAS) scores, duration of pain, Self-Rating Anxiety Scale (SAS), and Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS). Results: Compared to HCs, CNSP patients showed decreased mean FA values and increased mean MD values in bilateral intracranial STT compared to the HC group, but two-sample Conclusion: This research identified that patients with CNSP exhibited reduced mean FA and increased mean MD in the bilateral intracranial STT, although these differences were not statistically significant (
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