{"doi":"10.1101/2022.07.13.22277562","title":"Augmented Pain-Evoked Primary Sensorimotor Cortex Activation in Adolescent Girls with Juvenile Fibromyalgia","abstract":"Objective Juvenile fibromyalgia (JFM) is a chronic widespread pain condition that primarily affects adolescent girls. Previous studies have found increased sensitivity to noxious pressure in adolescents with JFM. However, the underlying changes in brain systems remain unclear. The aim of this study was to characterize pain-evoked brain responses and identify brain mediators of pain hypersensitivity in adolescent girls with JFM. Methods Thirty-three adolescent girls with JFM and thirty-three healthy adolescent girls underwent functional MRI scans involving noxious pressure applied to the left thumbnail at an intensity of 2.5 or 4 kg/cm 2 and rated pain intensity and unpleasantness on a computerized visual analogue scale. We conducted standard general linear model analyses and exploratory whole-brain mediation analyses, and computed pain-evoked brain responses within seven major cortical networks. Results The JFM group reported significantly greater pain intensity and unpleasantness than the control group in response to noxious pressure stimuli at both intensities (p<0.05). The JFM group showed augmented right primary somatosensory cortex (S1) activation to 4 kg/cm 2 (Z>3.1, cluster-corrected p<0.05), and the peak S1 activation magnitudes correlated with Widespread Pain Index scores (r=0.35, p=0.048). In the JFM group, we also found augmented activation of the somatomotor network in response to 2.5 kg/cm 2 , and greater primary sensorimotor cortex activation in response to 4kg/cm 2 mediated the between-group differences in pain intensity ratings (p<0.001). Conclusion We found heightened sensitivity to noxious pressure stimuli and augmented pain-evoked sensorimotor cortex responses in adolescent girls with JFM, which could reflect central sensitization or amplified nociceptive input.","journal":"medRxiv","year":2022,"id":301535,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":2,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9466,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2022-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":305944,"name":"Thomas Maloney","orcid":"0000-0002-2643-9009","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":403433,"name":"M. Payne","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":482789,"name":"María Suñol","orcid":"0000-0002-4731-4811","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":414439,"name":"Christopher D. King","orcid":"0000-0002-0089-7386","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":396756,"name":"Tracy V. Ting","orcid":"0000-0002-8312-6869","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":334494,"name":"Susmita Kashikar‐Zuck","orcid":"0000-0002-8321-9723","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":270122,"name":"Robert C. Coghill","orcid":"0000-0003-3828-1605","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":567358,"name":"Marina López‐Solà","orcid":"0000-0002-5517-2665","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":795973,"name":"Han Tong","orcid":"0000-0002-9821-5928","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":49,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T00:32:02.193874Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}