Anterior Insula Integrates Information about Salience into Perceptual Decisions about Pain
Anterior Insula Integrates Information about Salience into Perceptual Decisions about Pain
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DOI：
10.1523/jneurosci.2087-10.2010
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发表时间：
2010-12-01
影响因子：
5.3
通讯作者：
Tracey, Irene
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Wiech, Katja;Lin, Chia-shu;Tracey, Irene
决定一种感觉是否被视为疼痛不仅取决于感觉输入，还取决于刺激的重要性。在这里，我们表明，即将发生的刺激被解释为威胁的程度会影响关于疼痛的感知决策，并且这种对疼痛的偏见在遇到刺激之前就显现出来。利用功能磁共振成像，我们研究了威胁实验操作对激光刺激疼痛感知影响的神经机制。在接近阈值的疼痛检测范例中，在参与者假设刺激完全安全（低威胁）或潜在有害（高威胁）的情况下应用物理上相同的刺激。正如假设的那样，在高威胁条件下，更多的刺激被评定为疼痛。这种与环境相关的疼痛刺激分类是通过前岛叶的刺激前信号水平预测的，这表明这种结构将有关刺激重要性的信息整合到有关疼痛的决策中。对疼痛的预期增加了前岛叶和中扣带皮层（MCC）之间的刺激前功能连接，该区域在刺激过程中显着更加活跃，参与者在高威胁下更倾向于将刺激评为疼痛。这些发现提供的证据表明，前岛叶和 MCC 作为一个“显着网络”，将有关即将发生的刺激的重要性的信息整合到疼痛背景下的知觉决策中。
The decision as to whether a sensation is perceived as painful does not only depend on sensory input but also on the significance of the stimulus. Here, we show that the degree to which an impending stimulus is interpreted as threatening biases perceptual decisions about pain and that this bias toward pain manifests before stimulus encounter. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging we investigated the neural mechanisms underlying the influence of an experimental manipulation of threat on the perception of laser stimuli as painful. In a near-threshold pain detection paradigm, physically identical stimuli were applied under the participants' assumption that the stimulation is entirely safe (low threat) or potentially harmful (high threat). As hypothesized, significantly more stimuli were rated as painful in the high threat condition. This context-dependent classification of a stimulus as painful was predicted by the prestimulus signal level in the anterior insula, suggesting that this structure integrates information about the significance of a stimulus into the decision about pain. The anticipation of pain increased the prestimulus functional connectivity between the anterior insula and the midcingulate cortex (MCC), a region that was significantly more active during stimulation the more a participant was biased to rate the stimulation as painful under high threat. These findings provide evidence that the anterior insula and MCC as a "salience network" integrate information about the significance of an impending stimulation into perceptual decision-making in the context of pain.