Reactivation of Single-Episode Pain Patterns in the Hippocampus and Decision Making

Description: [Wimmer & Büchel (2021) J Neurosci] Group level maps. After incidental pairing of object pictures with high versus low heat pain, participants were re-exposed to the objects in a test phase. We found that activity in the strongest pain-responsive regions including the anterior insula did not show reactivation of pain-related patterns during re-exposure. However, we found that activity in the hippocampus significantly discriminated pain associations. Further, in a searchlight analysis we found that the degree of anterior hippocampal reactivation was positively correlated with participant memory for painful episodes. (n.b. to see the uploaded mask file, on the collection page, click on 'other' instead of 'group' to reveal the mask images.)

Related article: http://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1350-20.2021