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Background/Objectives: Variability in biopsychosocial factors can explain the interindividual variability in pain. One factor that can impact pain is the pain catastrophizing level. Interestingly, parental pain catastrophizing is related to the severity of the clinical pain of their children. This study explored whether parental pain catastrophizing is also associated with their children's experimental pain sensitivity. Methods: Forty-five healthy girls (mean age 12.07 ± 1.47 years) and one of their parents participated in this study. Parents completed the Pain Catastrophizing Scale (PCS) about their child's pain (PCS-Parentchild) as well as their pain (PCS-Parent). Children completed the PCS about their pain (PCS-Child) and the Pubertal Developmental Scale (PDS). Children underwent psychophysical tests, including paradigms of temporal summation, heat- and pressure-conditioned pain modulation, offset analgesia, and cold pain tolerance. Correlations and regression models were conducted to assess the relationships between parental pain catastrophizing scales (separately for PCS-Parentchild and PCS-Parent) and experimental pain sensitivity with and without controlling for PCS-Child and PDS. T-tests were used to compare pain sensitivity between participants with vs. without a family history of psychiatric disorder. Results: No significant relationships were found between the experimental pain sensitivity measures and either PCS-Parentchild or PCS-Parent with and without controlling for PCS-Child and PDS. No differences were found in experimental pain sensitivity between participants with and without a family history of psychiatric disorder. Conclusions: Parental pain catastrophizing may contribute minimally to the individual variability in experimental pain sensitivity of healthy adolescent girls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: A critical aspect for most human pain research is the ability of participants to communicate their first‐person, experiential perspective to a third‐person observer. This communication is frequently accomplished via pain ratings. The scale type can influence the communication of pain experiences and can contribute to gender differences in pain. This study examined the role of gender on pain ratings using noxious and innocuous stimuli across two types of rating scales. Methods: Healthy participants (n = 46) underwent noxious heat, auditory and visual stimulation paradigms. Pain intensity and unpleasantness ratings were collected using the visual analogue scale (VAS) and numerical rating scale (NRS). To determine if one rating scale allows a better report of small differences between different stimulus intensities, the sensitivity to small differences was calculated. Results: Significant effects for rating scale were found for all stimulus modalities (noxious heat, auditory and visual, p < 0.001) with higher intensity and unpleasantness ratings for the NRS compared to the VAS. Overall, no effects of gender or interactions with gender were found. No differences in rating scale and gender were detected for sensitivity to small differences between stimuli. Conclusions: These findings confirm differences in rating scale usage; however, the different usage might not contribute significantly to gender differences in pain. Significance: There are differences in the usage of rating scales in which ratings for auditory, visual and noxious somatosensory stimuli are higher with NRS compared to VAS. Choosing a rating scale for research or clinical use should take this different item functioning into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The red nucleus is a large brainstem structure that coordinates limb movement for locomotion in quadrupedal animals (Basile et al., 2021). The humans red nucleus has a different pattern of anatomical connectivity compared to quadrupeds, suggesting a unique purpose (Hatschek, 1907). Previously the function of the human red nucleus remained unclear at least partly due to methodological limitations with brainstem functional neuroimaging (Sclocco et al., 2018). Here, we used our most advanced resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) based precision functional mapping (PFM) in highly sampled individuals (n = 5) and large group-averaged datasets (combined N ~ 45,000), to precisely examine red nucleus functional connectivity. Notably, red nucleus functional connectivity to motor-effector networks (somatomotor hand, foot, and mouth) was minimal. Instead, red nucleus functional connectivity along the central sulcus was specific to regions of the recently discovered somato-cognitive action network (SCAN; (Gordon et al., 2023)). Outside of primary motor cortex, red nucleus connectivity was strongest to the cingulo-opercular (CON) and salience networks, involved in action/cognitive control (Dosenbach et al., 2007; Newbold et al., 2021) and reward/motivated behavior (Seeley, 2019), respectively. Functional connectivity to these two networks was organized into discrete dorsal-medial and ventral-lateral zones. Red nucleus functional connectivity to the thalamus recapitulated known structural connectivity of the dento-rubral thalamic tract (DRTT) and could prove clinically useful in functionally targeting the ventral intermediate (VIM) nucleus. In total, our results indicate that far from being a 'motor' structure, the red nucleus is better understood as a brainstem nucleus for implementing goal-directed behavior, integrating behavioral valence and action plans.