Brain Network Characteristics of Pain Patients Based on Magnetoencephalography

This is a single-center prospective cohort study. We plan to enroll at least 1,000 patients with muscle pain (VAS ≥ 3) and 200 healthy controls. The study aims to investigate neural oscillatory and functional connectivity characteristics in muscle pain patients using magnetoencephalography (MEG), and to analyze their associations with clinical phenotypes including pain intensity, emotional status, sleep quality, disease duration, and sex. Furthermore, we aim to develop a prognostic model for pain outcome. All pain patients will undergo baseline assessments including MEG (with working-memory task, resting-state, and stimulus-evoked paradigms), brain MRI, and a series of clinical scales (VAS, MPQ, HAMA, HAMD, PSQI, ODI, NDI, SPADI, IKDC, WOMAC, DASH, etc.). They will then be followed up at 1, 3, and 6 months, with repeated collection of pain and functional outcome measures. Multivariate regression, mixed-effects models, and penalized regression will be employed to build prediction models. Model performance will be evaluated using AUC, calibration curves, and bootstrap internal validation. We aim to identify candidate objective neural biomarkers to provide a scientific basis for objective pain assessment and stratified management.