Investigating the Neural Effects of Emotional Stimuli and Pharmacological Treatments on the Emotional Regulation Network in Fibromyalgia: A Graph Theory Approach.

BACKGROUND

The present study examines the impact of positive, negative, and neutral emotional stimuli on brain activity, as well as the relationship between various pharmacological treatment states and functional brain topology, with special emphasis on regions related to emotional regulation in patients with fibromyalgia (FM).

METHOD

In this study, fMRI images of 33 women with FM were used to analyze brain regions involved in emotional processing and regulation using various graph theory metrics. To investigate the relationship between the values of these metrics and different pharmacological treatment states, a one-way multivariate analysis of variance was conducted. Additionally, each of the graph theory metrics was examined in response to negative and positive stimuli in comparison to neutral stimuli.

RESULT

The results indicated that during positive stimulation, significant changes in brain activity were observed in the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC_R), the right supplementary motor area (SMA-R), and the left angular gyrus (AG-L) under various pharmacological conditions. In contrast, during negative stimulation, brain function in the VLPFC_R, right superior temporal gyrus, right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC-R), and ultimately AG-L exhibited significant differences across different pharmacological treatments. Additionally, significant differences in the function of all targeted regions related to the emotion regulation network were observed during positive and negative stimulation compared to neutral stimulation.

CONCLUSION

There is a significant relationship between emotional stimuli and brain function in FM patients, as well as between various pharmacological treatment states and the performance of the brain's emotion regulation network in response to positive and negative stimuli.