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Intensive longitudinal brain imaging reveals personalized signatures of chronic pain

Tracking ongoing spontaneous pain in individuals with chronic pain is challenging. Using intensive longitudinal functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) combined with continuous spontaneous pain ratings in two individuals with fibromyalgia, we trained personalized brain decoding models that could track moment-to-moment spontaneous pain fluctuations. Underscoring the need for precision approaches, neither decoding model generalized from one individual to the other.

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Fig. 1: Precision brain imaging reveals personalized brain signatures of spontaneous pain.

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This is a summary of: Lee, J.-J. et al. Personalized brain decoding of spontaneous pain in individuals with chronic pain. Nat. Neurosci. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-026-02221-3 (2026).

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Intensive longitudinal brain imaging reveals personalized signatures of chronic pain. Nat Neurosci (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-026-02238-8

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