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Abstract
In acute and ongoing pain, the spontaneous oscillatory activity of electroencephalogram (EEG) has been characterized by suppression of alpha band oscillations and enhancement of gamma band oscillations. In pathological chronic pain which is more severe and common in clinic practice, it is of great interest to investigate the oscillatory activity especially at the broad gamma frequency bands. Our present study explored the resting state oscillatory activities of EEG in patients with post-herpetic neuralgia (PHN) over 3 months which is a typical neuropathic pain model in clinical researches. It was found that the PHN patients showed anxiety and depression revealed by Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) and Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) examinations. Power spectrum analysis revealed that the power at gamma frequency band (from 40 to 70 Hz) of EEG was significantly higher in the PHN patients, and positively correlated with pain intensity, anxiety, and depression indexes. Further, increased gamma activity derived from the prefrontal cortex and the cerebellum were revealed by cluster-based sensor level and the beamforming source level analyses. These results suggest the enhanced gamma oscillatory activity in the prefrontal cortex and cerebellum is a characteristic marker in chronic neuropathic pain patients.
Highlights
Brain oscillation is rhythmic electrical activity and has distinct functions at different frequencies in various neural processing
As revealed by independent t-test, post-herpetic neuralgia (PHN) patients had significantly higher VAS pain ratings and Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) scores compared with healthy Controls indicating the chronic neuropathic pain and anxiety
Spearman correlation analysis further showed that the BAI score was positively correlated with VAS rating in PHN patients (r = 0.56, p < 0.05) but not in healthy Controls
Summary
Brain oscillation is rhythmic electrical activity and has distinct functions at different frequencies in various neural processing. It has been shown that oscillatory activities at alpha, beta, and gamma frequency bands are involved in short-lasting acute pain. The power at gamma frequency band (40–70 Hz) increased in experimental acute pain processing in healthy subjects and animals (Gross et al, 2007; Tiemann et al, 2010; Schulz et al, 2011; Wang et al, 2011; Zhang et al, 2012; Liu et al, 2015). Pathological pain severely impairs the life quality of patients It is characterized as persistent and long-lasting pain (Merskey and Bogduk, 2012), which is distinct from the short-lasting experimental acute pain and tonic pain. Unlike the experimental and tonic pain, information regarding the brain oscillatory activity in chronic pain is few
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