Abstract
Fibromyalgia (FM) is a chronic pain condition that is characterized by hypersensitivity to multimodal sensory stimuli, widespread pain, and fatigue. We have previously proposed explosive synchronization (ES), a phenomenon wherein a small perturbation to a network can lead to an abrupt state transition, as a potential mechanism of the hypersensitive FM brain. Therefore, we hypothesized that converting a brain network from ES to general synchronization (GS) may reduce the hypersensitivity of FM brain. To find an effective brain network modulation to convert ES into GS, we constructed a large-scale brain network model near criticality (i.e., an optimally balanced state between order and disorders), which reflects brain dynamics in conscious wakefulness, and adjusted two parameters: local structural connectivity and signal randomness of target brain regions. The network sensitivity to global stimuli was compared between the brain networks before and after the modulation. We found that only increasing the local connectivity of hubs (nodes with intense connections) changes ES to GS, reducing the sensitivity, whereas other types of modulation such as decreasing local connectivity, increasing and decreasing signal randomness are not effective. This study would help to develop a network mechanism-based brain modulation method to reduce the hypersensitivity in FM.
Highlights
Hypersensitive responses to external stimuli have been widely observed in various physical and biological systems such as cascading failures in power grids, abrupt state transitions in an electronic circuit, abrupt loss and recovery of consciousness in general anesthesia, and epileptic seizures in the brain (Chen et al, 2013; Boccaletti et al, 2016; Wang et al, 2017)
We modulated the degree of explosive synchronization (ES) condition in the human brain network model with four different types of network modulation: increasing or decreasing the local structural connectivity and increasing or decreasing the randomness of node dynamics within a certain diameter centered on a target node
The examples are the shapes of synchronization transition of brain network modulation targeting the right precuneus for each type of modulation
Summary
Hypersensitive responses to external stimuli have been widely observed in various physical and biological systems such as cascading failures in power grids, abrupt state transitions in an electronic circuit, abrupt loss and recovery of consciousness in general anesthesia, and epileptic seizures in the brain (Chen et al, 2013; Boccaletti et al, 2016; Wang et al, 2017). Fibromyalgia (FM), a chronic pain disorder, is characterized by fatigue, poor memory, sleep problems, and mood disturbance (Hawkins, 2013; Menzies, 2016). Many of these individuals present a hypersensitive response to. A strong positive correlation was detected between the strength of ES conditions and chronic pain intensity in FM patients. This suggests that specific topological and functional network configurations of the brain could induce the first-order phase transition (abrupt state transition) against an external stimulus (Kim et al, 2016, 2017; Lee et al, 2018)
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