Author: Jiao Liu1,2,3, Weilin Liu1, Jia Huang1,4, Yajun Wang1,4, Baoru Zhao1,4, Peiling Zeng1,4, Guiyan Cai1,4, Ruilin Chen1,4, Kun Hu1,4, YouXue Tu1,4, Meiqin Lin1,4, Jian Kong3, Jing Tao1,4,5, Lidian Chen1,4,5
Affiliation: <sup>1</sup> National-Local Joint Engineering Research Center of Rehabilitation Medicine Technology, Fujian University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, China.
<sup>2</sup> School of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China.
<sup>3</sup> Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, United States.
<sup>4</sup> College of Rehabilitation Medicine, Fujian University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, China.
<sup>5</sup> Traditional Chinese Medicine Rehabilitation Research Center of State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Fujian University of Traditional Chinese, China.
Conference/Journal: Int J Clin Health Psychol
Date published: 2024 Jan-Mar
Other:
Volume ID: 24 , Issue ID: 1 , Pages: 100421 , Special Notes: doi: 10.1016/j.ijchp.2023.100421. , Word Count: 263
Background/objective:
To investigate the modulatory effects of different physical exercise modalities on connectivity of amygdala subregions and its association with pain symptoms in patients with knee osteoarthritis (KOA).
Methods:
140 patients with KOA were randomly allocated either to the Tai Chi, Baduanjin, Stationary cycling, or health education group and conducted a 12 week-long intervention in one of the four groups. The behavioral, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and blood data were collected at baseline and the end of the study.
Results:
Compared to the control group, all physical exercise modalities lead to significant increases in Knee Injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score (KOOS) pain score (pain relief) and serum Programmed Death-1 (PD-1) levels. Additionally, all physical exercise modalities resulted in decreased resting state functional connectivity (rsFC) of the basolateral amygdala (BA)-temporal pole and BA-medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). The overlapping BA-temporal pole rsFC observed in both Tai Chi and Baduanjin groups was significantly associated with pain relief, while the BA-mPFC rsFC was significantly associated with PD-1 levels. In addition, we found increased fractional anisotropy (FA) values, a measurement of water diffusion anisotropy of tissue that responded to changes in brain microstructure, within the mind-body exercise groups' BA-temporal pole pathway. The average FA value of this pathway was positively correlated with KOOS pain score at baseline across all subjects.
Conclusions:
Our findings suggest that physical exercise has the potential to modulate both functional and anatomical connectivity of the amygdala subregions, indicating a possible shared pathway for various physical exercise modalities.
Keywords: Amygdala subregions; Exercise; Functional magnetic resonance imaging; Knee osteoarthritis; Pain.
PMID: 38077287 PMCID: PMC10709058 DOI: 10.1016/j.ijchp.2023.100421