Chronic pain disorders are extremely common, including chronic back pain and headaches, but also chronic visceral pain disorders, such as irritable bowel syndrome. Treatment is notoriously difficult. A detailed understanding of the neural pain circuitry is a prerequisite for the development of new treatment options. The cerebellum has become an interesting target for non-invasive and invasive brain stimulations in a wide range of brain disorders and may be a future option in treating chronic pain. The possible contribution of the cerebellum to the pathophysiology of chronic pain has become of interest only recently.1 Although the cerebellum has frequently been shown to respond to painful stimuli, knowledge about the specific contributions of the cerebellum to pain processing remains elusive. Electrophysiological studies in rodents provide evidence that the cerebellum receives afferent input coming from cutaneous and visceral nociceptors.2 Our group and others have found that neural processing of somatic and visceral pain is partly overlapping but reveals also significant differences.3 As yet, however, it is unknown to what extent cerebellar responses differ between visceral and somatic pain. To address this question, we compared pain-related activations of the cerebellum between carefully matched rectal distensions and cutaneous heat stimuli. Functional MRI (fMRI) data were acquired in 22 healthy female participants as part of a previous study.3 fMRI data were reanalysed using a normalising method optimised for the cerebellum. Participants were on average 24.4±0.6 years old with a mean body mass index of 21.9±0.5. Questionnaires confirmed lack …

中文翻译：

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小脑更关心内脏而不是躯体疼痛。

慢性疼痛疾病极为常见，包括慢性背痛和头痛，还包括慢性内脏疼痛疾病，如肠易激综合症。众所周知，治疗非常困难。对神经痛回路的详细了解是开发新治疗方案的先决条件。小脑已成为广泛的脑部疾病中非侵入性和侵入性脑刺激的有趣靶标，并且可能是治疗慢性疼痛的未来选择。小脑对慢性疼痛的病理生理可能做出的贡献直到最近才引起人们的关注。1尽管小脑经常被证明对疼痛刺激有反应，但是关于小脑对疼痛处理的特定作用的知识仍然难以捉摸。啮齿动物的电生理研究提供了证据，证明小脑从皮肤和内脏伤害感受器接收传入的输入信号。2我们的小组和其他人发现，躯体和内脏疼痛的神经处理部分重叠，但也显示出显着差异。3然而，到目前为止，尚不清楚内脏和躯体疼痛之间小脑反应的差异程度。为了解决这个问题，我们比较了精心匹配的直肠扩张和皮肤热刺激之间小脑疼痛相关的激活。作为先前研究的一部分，获得了22名健康女性参与者的功能性MRI（fMRI）数据。3使用针对小脑优化的归一化方法重新分析了3个fMRI数据。参与者的平均年龄为24.4±0.6岁，平均体重指数为21.9±0.5。