Brain network segregation and integration during painful thermal stimulation

Abstract

The present study aimed to determine changes in brain network integration/segregation during thermal pain using methods optimized for network connectivity events with high temporal resolution. Participants (n = 33) actively judged whether thermal stimuli applied to the volar forearm were painful or not and then rated the warmth/pain intensity after each trial. We show that the temporal evolution of integration/segregation within trials correlates with the subjective ratings of pain. Specifically, the brain shifts from a segregated state to an integrated state when processing painful stimuli. The association with subjective pain ratings occurred at different time points for all networks. However, the degree of association between ratings and integration/segregation vanished for several brain networks when time-varying functional connectivity was measured at lower temporal resolution. Moreover, the increased integration associated with pain is explained to some degree by relative increases in between-network connectivity. Our results highlight the importance of investigating the relationship between pain and brain network connectivity at a single time point scale, since commonly used temporal aggregations of connectivity data may result in that fine-scale changes in network connectivity may go unnoticed. The interplay between integration/segregation reflects shifting demands of information processing between brain networks and this adaptation occurs both for cognitive tasks and nociceptive processing.