Abstract
Chronic pain is a major health care issue characterized by ongoing pain and a variety of sensory, cognitive, and affective abnormalities. The neural basis of chronic pain is still not completely understood. Previous work has implicated prefrontal brain areas in chronic pain. Furthermore, prefrontal neuronal oscillations at gamma frequencies (60–90 Hz) have been shown to reflect the perceived intensity of longer lasting experimental pain in healthy human participants. In contrast, noxious stimulus intensity has been related to alpha (8–13 Hz) and beta (14–29 Hz) oscillations in sensorimotor areas. However, it is not fully understood how the intensity of ongoing pain as the key symptom of chronic pain is represented in the human brain. Here, we asked 31 chronic back pain patients to continuously rate their ongoing pain while simultaneously recording electroencephalography (EEG). Time–frequency analyses revealed a positive association between ongoing pain intensity and prefrontal beta and gamma oscillations. No association was found between pain and alpha or beta oscillations in sensorimotor areas. These findings indicate that ongoing pain as the key symptom of chronic pain is reflected by neuronal oscillations implicated in the subjective perception of longer lasting pain rather than by neuronal oscillations related to the processing of objective nociceptive input. The findings, thus, support a dissociation of pain intensity from nociceptive processing in chronic back pain patients. Furthermore, although possible confounds by muscle activity have to be taken into account, they might be useful for defining a neurophysiological marker of ongoing pain in the human brain.
Highlights
Chronic pain is a major health care issue characterized by ongoing pain and a variety of sensory, TUM-Neuroimaging Center, Technische
These findings indicate that ongoing pain as the key symptom of chronic pain is reflected by neuronal oscillations implicated in the subjective perception of longer lasting pain rather than by neuronal oscillations related to the processing of objective nociceptive input
We hypothesized that the intensity of ongoing pain in chronic pain is reflected by neuronal activity related to the perception of longer lasting pain, that is, prefrontal gamma oscillations, rather than neuronal activity related to nociceptive processing, that is, alpha and beta oscillations in sensorimotor areas
Summary
321/10-2, PL 321/11-1, PL 321/10-1 cognitive, and affective abnormalities. The neural basis of chronic pain is still not completely understood. They showed that objective noxious stimulus intensity was inversely related to alpha (8–13 Hz) and beta (14–29 Hz) oscillations in sensorimotor areas, whereas subjective pain was positively related to neuronal oscillations at gamma (60–90 Hz) frequencies in the prefrontal cortex. We hypothesized that the intensity of ongoing pain in chronic pain is reflected by neuronal activity related to the perception of longer lasting pain, that is, prefrontal gamma oscillations, rather than neuronal activity related to nociceptive processing, that is, alpha and beta oscillations in sensorimotor areas. Time–frequency analyses revealed that ongoing pain intensity is reflected by prefrontal gamma oscillations but not by alpha and beta oscillations in sensorimotor areas These findings hint at a direct neurophysiological marker of ongoing pain as the key symptom of chronic pain. The visual control condition was performed to control for activity related to the continuous rating pro-
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