Beyond Inflammation: Why Understanding the Brain Matters in Inflammatory Arthritis.

ABSTRACT: Persistent pain remains a major challenge in inflammatory arthritis, even when joint inflammation is well controlled. Pain and associated symptoms such as fatigue cannot be explained by peripheral inflammation alone but reflect altered central pain processing. These changes may arise through "top-down" mechanisms, reflecting pre-existing dysfunction in pain perception, or "bottom-up" pathways, driven by peripheral inflammation acting on the brain. Neuroimaging has transformed understanding of these processes by providing in vivo markers of how brain function and structure are related to pain. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) demonstrates that both task-evoked and resting-state activity are altered in inflammatory arthritis. Connectivity changes involving the thalamus, insula, me

SUBMITTER: Kelleher EM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12826092 | biostudies-literature | 2026 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature