Sensory-motor rhythms are modulated in response to perception of pain in others

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event Sensory-motor rhythms are modulated in response to perception of pain in others Steven Whitmarsh1*, Ole Jensen1, Ingrid Niewenhuis1 and Henk Barendregt2 1 Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Netherlands 2 Radboud University, Netherlands Recent years have seen the emergence of a neuroscientific understanding of empathic responses as embodied sensory and motor processing. For instance remarkable overlap in first- and third-person perspectives has been demonstrated when processing tactile, nociceptive, emotional or behavioral information. In the current study we used MEG (VSM-CTF; 275 sensors) to measure neuromagnetic responses to the observation of static pictures depicting hand and feet in painful and non-painful situations. Our main objective was to investigate oscillatory responses reflecting the perception of pain in others. We found that observation of the hand and feet in non-painful situations resulted in significant suppression of mu and beta oscillations over sensorimotor and visual regions. Observing the limbs in painful situations significantly suppressed these sensorimotor rhythms further. The effect was most pronounced above left sensorimotor regions. In addition, the painful stimuli also induced significantly higher power in the gamma band (65-100Hz) over occipital areas. In future analysis we will localize the source using beamformer techniques. In addition, we intend to characterize the functional cross-frequency coupling between central alpha/beta oscillations and the induced posterior gamma oscillations. Our findings so far suggest that viewing painful compared to neutral stimuli engages both sensorimotor areas and visual areas. This supports the notion that embodied representations are involved in processing the valence of perceived third-person events. Conference: Biomag 2010 - 17th International Conference on Biomagnetism , Dubrovnik, Croatia, 28 Mar - 1 Apr, 2010. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation Topic: Sensory Processing and Functional Connectivity Citation: Whitmarsh S, Jensen O, Niewenhuis I and Barendregt H (2010). Sensory-motor rhythms are modulated in response to perception of pain in others. Front. Neurosci. Conference Abstract: Biomag 2010 - 17th International Conference on Biomagnetism . doi: 10.3389/conf.fnins.2010.06.00154 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 26 Mar 2010; Published Online: 26 Mar 2010. * Correspondence: Steven Whitmarsh, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Nijmegen, Netherlands, s.whitmarsh@cs.ru.nl Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Steven Whitmarsh Ole Jensen Ingrid Niewenhuis Henk Barendregt Google Steven Whitmarsh Ole Jensen Ingrid Niewenhuis Henk Barendregt Google Scholar Steven Whitmarsh Ole Jensen Ingrid Niewenhuis Henk Barendregt PubMed Steven Whitmarsh Ole Jensen Ingrid Niewenhuis Henk Barendregt Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.