Pain is a pervasive symptom in lung cancer patients during the onset of the disease. This study aims to investigate the connectivity disruption patterns of the whole-brain functional network in lung cancer patients with cancer pain (CP+). We constructed individual whole-brain, region of interest (ROI)-level functional connectivity (FC) networks for 50 CP+ patients, 34 lung cancer patients without pain-related complaints (CP−), and 31 matched healthy controls (HC). Then, a ROI-based FC analysis was used to determine the disruptions of FC among the three groups. The relationships between aberrant FCs and clinical parameters were also characterized. The ROI-based FC analysis demonstrated that hypo-connectivity was present both in CP+ and CP− patients compared to HC, which were particularly clustered in the somatomotor and ventral attention, frontoparietal control, and default mode modules. Notably, compared to CP− patients, CP+ patients had hyper-connectivity in several brain regions mainly distributed in the somatomotor and visual modules, suggesting these abnormal FC patterns may be significant for cancer pain. Moreover, CP+ patients also showed increased intramodular and intermodular connectivity strength of the functional network, which could be replicated in cancer stage IV and lung adenocarcinoma. Finally, abnormal FCs within the prefrontal cortex and somatomotor cortex were positively correlated with pain intensity and pain duration, respectively. These findings suggested that lung cancer patients with cancer pain had disrupted connectivity in the intrinsic brain functional network, which may be the underlying neuroimaging mechanisms.

疼痛是肺癌患者发病期间普遍存在的症状。本研究旨在调查患有癌痛（CP+）的肺癌患者全脑功能网络的连接中断模式。我们为 50 名 CP+ 患者、34 名无疼痛相关主诉的肺癌患者 (CP−) 和 31 名匹配的健康对照 (HC) 构建了个体全脑、感兴趣区域 (ROI) 级功能连接 (FC) 网络。然后，使用基于 ROI 的 FC 分析来确定三组之间 FC 的中断情况。异常 FC 与临床参数之间的关系也得到了表征。基于 ROI 的 FC 分析表明，与 HC 相比，CP+ 和 CP− 患者均存在低连接性，尤其集中在躯体运动和腹侧注意力、额顶控制和默认模式模块中。值得注意的是，与 CP- 患者相比，CP+ 患者在主要分布于躯体运动和视觉模块的几个大脑区域具有超连接性，这表明这些异常的 FC 模式可能对癌痛具有重要意义。此外，CP+患者还表现出功能网络的模块内和模块间连接强度增加，这可以在癌症IV期和肺腺癌中复制。最后，前额皮质和躯体运动皮质内的异常 FC 分别与疼痛强度和疼痛持续时间呈正相关。这些发现表明，患有癌痛的肺癌患者内在大脑功能网络的连接性被破坏，这可能是潜在的神经影像机制。