Frontal parietal network
pain
HEAT, CORTEX
The FPN is composed of the rostral lateral and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and the anterior inferior parietal lobule. Literature suggests that the FPN plays a pivotal role in cognitive/executive control and is actively involved in several cognitive tasks such as working memory, decision making, attention, and reasoning (In this study, we found that anodal tDCS increased the FC between the FPN and right parietal operculum, in the region adjacent to (but not overlapping with) the operculum cluster detected in the DAN analysis. As we mentioned above, the S2 is one of the key regions involved in heat pain processing (It’s worth noting that in this study, the active tDCS produced an effect in the FPN-left supramarginal gyrus, irrespective of its polarity. In fact, we also found that the cathodal mode increased the FC between the FPN and left superior parietal gyrus. The increased FC between the FPN and superior parietal lobule (derived from comparing cathodal and sham tDCS) presented a trend (Overall, our findings suggest that tDCS applied at the right DLPFC triggers FC changes of the DAN and FPN with brain regions involved in pain sensory receiving and processing and stimulus selection and attention. These findings suggest that modulating FC within the DAN and FPN may be a promising approach for enhancing the placebo effect and improving pain management. More research is needed to confirm these findings and to understand the mechanisms by which modulating FC works.These results are consistent with our previous work (