Abstract
Pain is common in older individuals often interfering with daily function, and pain interference is a common proxy for measuring physical functioning in this population. Although both pain and aging are associated with changes to brain volume, relatively few studies have examined the association between pain interference and brain volume among older individuals. As part of the Neuromodulatory Examination of Pain Across the Lifespan (NEPAL) study at the University of Florida, older individuals 60 to 93 years old (n=49, 69% female) filled out demographic and pain questionnaires followed by a structural 3-Tesla MRI scan. FreeSurfer 6.0.0 was used for preprocessing, quality control, and for volumetric parcellation generation. FreeSurfer Query, Design, Estimate, Contrast (QDEC) processing stream was used for statistical analysis controlling for multiple comparisons with gender as a nuisance covariate. Higher pain interference was associated with smaller volume in the lateral orbitofrontal cortex, rostral middle frontal cortex, post-central cortex, superior temporal cortex, and precuneus but larger volume in the superior frontal and parstriangularis cortices (False Discovery Rate p's
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