Peripheral arterial stiffness during electrocutaneous stimulation is positively correlated with pain-related brain activity and subjective pain intensity: an fMRI study

Brain activity associated with pain perception has been revealed by numerous PET and fMRI studies over the past few decades. These findings helped to establish the concept of the pain matrix, which is the distributed brain networks that demonstrate pain-specific cortical activities. We previously found that peripheral arterial stiffness β_art responds to pain intensity, which is estimated from electrocardiography, continuous sphygmomanometer, and photo-plethysmography. However, it remains unclear whether and to what extent β_art aligns with pain matrix brain activity. In this fMRI study, 22 participants received different intensities of pain stimuli. We identified brain regions in which the blood oxygen level-dependent signal covaried with β_art using parametric modulation analysis. Among the identified brain regions, the lateral and medial prefrontal cortex and ventral and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex were consistent with the pain matrix. We found moderate correlations between the average activities in these regions and β_art (r = 0.47, p < 0.001). β_art was also significantly correlated with self-reported pain intensity (r = 0.44, p < 0.001) and applied pain intensity (r = 0.43, p < 0.001). Our results indicate that β_art is positively correlated with pain-related brain activity and subjective pain intensity. This study may thus represent a basis for adopting peripheral arterial stiffness as an objective pain evaluation metric.