Original title: Localized surface-based morphometric differences in painful temporomandibular disorder
Soamy Montesino-Goicolea, Pedro Antonio Valdes-Hernandez, Julio A Peraza, Margarete Ribeiro Dasilva +2 · September 2026
Temporomandibular disorders, or TMDs, cause chronic face and jaw pain that can make everyday life difficult. Researchers wanted to see if this ongoing pain changes the physical structure of the brain. They took high-resolution brain scans of people with painful TMD and healthy people without pain. Using special software, they measured the shape and size of the brain's outer surface, called the cortex. They discovered that people with painful TMD had greater brain surface folding, known as curvature, and larger volume in specific left areas of the cingulate cortexA brain region involved in pain, attention, and emotion.. This brain area handles attention to pain and connects senses to movement. Finding these physical differences helps show how lasting jaw pain relates to measurable structural changes in the brain.
You have a garden hedge, and you know exactly how it usually looks. But after a harsh winter, one small section grows oddly thicker and more curved than the rest, and you only notice because you look closely. In this paper, the brain is the hedge, chronic jaw pain is the harsh winter, and one specific brain region is that small section that shows a measurable shape change.
Temporomandibular disorder affects millions, causing pain while eating, talking, and sleeping. This study shows the condition leaves a measurable mark on a brain region tied to attention and sensation, which could one day help diagnose or track the disorder.
This is a small cross-sectional study, so it can't show that jaw pain causes the brain differences, only that they are associated. The sample consists of 19 patients and 20 controls, and no other regions survived multiple-comparison correction, so the findings are preliminary and need replication.
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Localized surface-based morphometric differences in painful temporomandibular disorder — Soamy Montesino-Goicolea, Pedro Antonio Valdes-Hernandez, Julio A Peraza et al. — Neuroimage. Reports — doi:10.1016/j.ynirp.2026.100404
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper.