The DOI matches its Crossref record; 82 of the 82 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy Increases Prefrontal Cortex Gray Matter in Patients With Chronic Pain
Open accessAbstract
Unlabelled Several studies have reported reduced cerebral gray matter (GM) volume or density in chronic pain conditions, but there is limited research on the plasticity of the human cortex in response to psychological interventions. We investigated GM changes after cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) in patients with chronic pain. We used voxel-based morphometry to compare anatomic magnetic resonance imaging scans of 13 patients with mixed chronic pain types before and after an 11-week CBT treatment and to 13 healthy control participants. CBT led to significant improvements in clinical measures. Patients did not differ from healthy controls in GM anywhere in the brain. After treatment, patients had increased GM in the bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal, posterior parietal, subgenual anterior cingulate/orbitofrontal, and sensorimotor cortices, as well as hippocampus, and reduced GM in supplementary motor area. In most of these areas showing GM increases, GM became significantly higher than in controls. Decreased pain catastrophizing was associated with increased GM in the left dorsolateral prefrontal and ventrolateral prefrontal cortices, right posterior parietal cortex, somatosensory cortex, and pregenual anterior cingulate cortex. Although future studies with additional control groups will be needed to determine the specific roles of CBT on GM and brain function, we propose that increased GM in the prefrontal and posterior parietal cortices reflects greater top-down control over pain and cognitive reappraisal of pain, and that changes in somatosensory cortices reflect alterations in the perception of noxious signals.Perspective An 11-week CBT intervention for coping with chronic pain resulted in increased GM volume in prefrontal and somatosensory brain regions, as well as increased dorsolateral prefrontal volume associated with reduced pain catastrophizing. These results add to mounting evidence that CBT can be a valuable treatment option for chronic pain.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
In the citing paper
“Notably there was increased functional connectivity between the DLPFC and the periaqueductal gray – an opioid rich brainstem region involved in descending pain modulation91”
From The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in acute and chronic pain (2017) · cites this paper as [91]
In the citing paper
“Another study investigating the neural underpinnings of effective pain management with cognitive behavioral training in a mixed chronic pain population reported increased left DLPFC GMV, which correlated with reduction in pain catastrophizing91”
From The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in acute and chronic pain (2017) · cites this paper as [91]
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
An inventory for measuring depression
BECK, A. T. (1961) · Archives of General Psychiatry · doi:10.1001/archpsyc.1961.01710120031004 · Cited by 38,032
(1992) · PubMed · Cited by 33,716
The MOS 36-ltem Short-Form Health Survey (SF-36): I. Conceptual Framework and Item Selection
Ware, J. E., & Sherbourne, C. D. (1992) · Medical Care · doi:10.1097/00005650-199206000-00002 · Cited by 30,033
The human brain is intrinsically organized into dynamic, anticorrelated functional networks
Fox, M. D., Snyder, A. Z., Vincent, J. L., Corbetta, M., Van Essen, D. C., & Raichle, M. E. (2005) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.0504136102 · Cited by 8,553
Selective Cortical Undercutting As a Means of Modifying and Studying Frontal Lobe Function in Man
Scoville, W. B. (1949) · Journal of neurosurgery · doi:10.3171/jns.1949.6.1.0065 · Cited by 7,374
The cognitive control of emotion
OCHSNER, K., & GROSS, J. (2005) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2005.03.010 · Cited by 4,495
The short-form McGill pain questionnaire
Melzack, R. (1987) · Pain · doi:10.1016/0304-3959(87)91074-8 · Cited by 4,368
J Neuropsychiatry Clin Neurosci
Yudofsky, S. C., & Hales, R. E. (1992) · The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences · doi:10.1176/jnp.4.4.359 · Cited by 3,818
Theoretical perspectives on the relation between catastrophizing and pain
Sullivan, M. J. L., Thorn, B., Haythornthwaite, J. A., Keefe, F., Martin, M., Bradley, L. A., & Lefebvre, J. C. (2001) · The Clinical Journal of Pain · doi:10.1097/00002508-200103000-00008 · Cited by 2,472
Self-citationFunctional imaging of brain responses to pain. A review and meta-analysis (2000)
Peyron, R., Laurent, B., & García-Larrea, L. (2000) · Neurophysiologie Clinique/Clinical Neurophysiology · doi:10.1016/s0987-7053(00)00227-6 · Cited by 2,171
Cited by
Sorted by citations
The role of psychosocial processes in the development and maintenance of chronic pain
Edwards, R. R., Dworkin, R. H., Sullivan, M. D., Turk, D. C., & Wasan, A. D. (2016) · The Journal of Pain · doi:10.1016/j.jpain.2016.01.001 · Cited by 954
“Finally, psychosocial and behavioral interventions that target cognitive processes have been shown to reverse these functional and structural brain changes over the course of just months.(204,205)”
Role of the Prefrontal Cortex in Pain Processing
Ong, W., Stohler, C. S., & Herr, D. R. (2018) · Molecular Neurobiology · doi:10.1007/s12035-018-1130-9 · Cited by 824
“Interestingly, cognitive behavioral therapy has also been found to result in increased graymatter in patient with chronic pain [277].”
BackgroundThe dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in acute and chronic pain
Seminowicz, D. A., & Moayedi, M. (2017) · The Journal of Pain · doi:10.1016/j.jpain.2017.03.008 · Cited by 502
Self-citationPsychological processing in chronic pain: a neural systems approach
Simons, L. E., Elman, I., & Borsook, D. (2014) · Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews · doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2013.12.006 · Cited by 359
Brain changes associated with cognitive and emotional factors in chronic pain: A systematic review
Malfliet, A., Coppieters, I., Van Wilgen, P., Kregel, J., De Pauw, R., Dolphens, M., & Ickmans, K. (2017) · European Journal of Pain · doi:10.1002/ejp.1003 · Cited by 342
“…and gray matter morphology, resting state functional connectivity, and task-related functional brain activation (Gracely et al., 2004; Lloyd et al., 2008, 2014; Blankstein et al., 2010; Burgmer et al., 2011; Seminowicz et al., 2013; Kucyi et al., 2014; Gupta et al., 2015; Loggia et al., 2015).”
BackgroundInfluential
Metadata
- Authors
- Seminowicz, D. A., Shpaner, M., Keaser, M. L., Krauthamer, G. M., Mantegna, J., Dumas, J. A., Newhouse, P. A., Filippi, C. G., Keefe, F. J., & Naylor, M. R.
- Affiliations
- University of Maryland, Baltimore (US)
- University of Vermont (US)
- Duke University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Naylor, Magdalena R.
- Venue
- The Journal of Pain
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2013-12
- Volume
- 14
- Issue
- 12
- Pages
- 1573-1584
- ISSN
- 1526-5900 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC3874446
- OpenAlex
- W2081653089
- Cited by
- 305
- References
- 82
- Citations by year
- 2026: 12 · 2025: 33 · 2024: 28 · 2023: 25 · 2022: 26 · 2021: 26 · 2020: 23 · 2019: 29 · 2018: 28 · 2017: 24 · 2016: 25 · 2015: 17 · 2014: 9
- FWCI
- 21.62
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Journal of Pain (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- Centre d'Imagerie BioMédicale
- National Institutes of Health
- National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (R01AR059674, R01AR052131, R21AR055716)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine › Pain Management and Treatment
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Physiology (medical) › Pain Mechanisms and Treatments
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Pain Management and Placebo Effect
- Keywords
- cognitive behavioral therapy, chronic pain, gray matter volume, prefrontal cortex, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, posterior parietal cortex, pain catastrophizing, somatosensory cortex, supplementary motor area, hippocampus, neuroplasticity, psychological intervention
- MeSH terms
- Adaptation, Psychological, Adult, Aged, Female, Humans, Longitudinal Studies, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Middle Aged, Organ Size, Pain Measurement, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Prefrontal Cortex, Young Adult, Chronic Pain
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
