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Reduced volume of gray matter in patients with trigeminal neuralgia

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Abstract

Accumulating evidence from brain structural imaging studies has supported that chronic pain could induce changes in brain gray matter volume. However, few studies have focused on the gray matter alterations of Trigeminal neuralgia (TN). In this study, twenty-eight TN patients (thirteen females; mean age, 45.86 years ±11.17) and 28 healthy controls (HC; thirteen females; mean age, 44.89 years ±7.67) were included. Using voxel-based morphometry (VBM), we detected abnormalities in gray matter volume in the TN patients. Based on a voxel-wise analysis, the TN group showed significantly decreased gray matter volume in the bilateral superior/middle temporal gyrus (STG/MTG), bilateral parahippocampus, left anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), caudate nucleus, right fusiform gyrus, and right cerebellum compared with the HC. In addition, we found that the gray matter volume in the bilateral STG/MTG was negatively correlated with the duration of TN. These results provide compelling evidence for gray matter abnormalities in TN and suggest that the duration of TN may be a critical factor associated with brain alterations.

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Acknowledgments

This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant numbers: 81471639), the Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangdong Province, China (Grant numbers: 2012A030400019 and 2013B021800172).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medical Imaging, Guangdong No. 2 Provincial People’s Hospital, Guangzhou, 510317, People’s Republic of China

    Meng Li, Jianhao Yan, Shumei Li, Tianyue Wang, Wenfeng Zhan, Hua Wen, Xiaofen Ma, Junzhang Tian & Guihua Jiang

  2. Department of Neurosurgery, Guangdong No. 2 Provincial People’s Hospital, Guangzhou, 510317, People’s Republic of China

    Yong Zhang

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  1. Meng Li
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Correspondence to Guihua Jiang.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Conflict of interest

Author Meng Li, Jianhao Yan, Shumei Li, Tianyue Wang, Wenfeng Zhan, Hua Wen, Xiaofen Ma, Yong Zhang, Junzhang Tian, Guihua Jiang declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Li, M., Yan, J., Li, S. et al. Reduced volume of gray matter in patients with trigeminal neuralgia. Brain Imaging and Behavior 11, 486–492 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-016-9529-2

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