TY - JOUR T1 - Thalamocortical Mechanisms for Nostalgia-Induced Analgesia JF - The Journal of Neuroscience JO - J. Neurosci. SP - 2963 LP - 2972 DO - 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2123-21.2022 VL - 42 IS - 14 AU - Zhang, Ming (张明) AU - Yang, Ziyan (杨紫嫣) AU - Zhong, Jiahui (钟嘉慧) AU - Zhang, Yuqi (章玉琪) AU - Lin, Xiaomin (林校民) AU - Cai, Huajian (蔡华俭) AU - Kong, Yazhuo (孔亚卓) Y1 - 2022/04/06 UR - http://www.jneurosci.org/content/42/14/2963.abstract N2 - As a predominately positive emotion, nostalgia serves various adaptive functions, including a recently revealed analgesic effect. The current fMRI study aimed to explore the neural mechanisms underlying the nostalgia-induced analgesic effect on noxious thermal stimuli of different intensities. Human participants' (males and females) behavior results showed that the nostalgia paradigm significantly reduced participants' perception of pain, particularly at low pain intensities. fMRI analysis revealed that analgesia was related to decreased brain activity in pain-related brain regions, including the lingual and parahippocampal gyrus. Notably, anterior thalamic activation during the nostalgia stage predicted posterior parietal thalamus activation during the pain stage, suggesting that the thalamus might play a key role as a central functional linkage in the analgesic effect. Moreover, while thalamus-PAG functional connectivity was found to be related to nostalgic strength, periaqueductal gray-dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (PAG-dlPFC) functional connectivity was found to be associated with pain perception, suggesting possible analgesic modulatory pathways. These findings demonstrate the analgesic effect of nostalgia and, more importantly, shed light on its neural mechanism.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Nostalgia is known to reduce individuals' perception of physical pain. The underlying brain mechanisms, however, are unclear. Our study found that the thalamus plays a key role as a functional linkage between nostalgia and pain, suggesting a possible analgesic modulatory mechanism of nostalgia. These findings have implications for the underlying brain mechanisms of psychological analgesia. ER -