Perception of pain coincides with the spatial expansion of electroencephalographic dynamics in human subjects

doi:10.1016/S0304-3940(00)01696-7

Neuroscience Letters

Volume 297, Issue 3, 19 January 2001, Pages 183-186

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0304-3940(00)01696-7 Get rights and content

Abstract

The dynamics of cortex driven by painful median nerve stimulation were investigated in event-related oscillation (ERO). We applied a wavelet time-frequency analysis to differentiate the brain dynamics between painful and non-painful somatosensory stimulation. The observed pattern to pain-induced effects exhibited a stepwise decrease of frequencies over time, starting around 26 ms over somatosensory cortex at 80 Hz, intermediate oscillations at 40 and 20 Hz around 40 ms, and reaching down to 10 Hz after 160 ms. This step-wise frequency decrease of ERO, coincident with spatial shift from the contralateral somatosensory area at 80 Hz to the centro-frontal brain at 40/20 Hz and final spatial expansion to the large region of centro-parietal areas at 10 Hz, may represent the cortical processes necessary to transfer sensory information from perceptual stages to subsequent cognitive stages in consciousness.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by fundings from the Danish National Research Foundation.

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Perception of pain coincides with the spatial expansion of electroencephalographic dynamics in human subjects

Abstract

Section snippets

Acknowledgements

Lancet

Neurosci. Lett.

Brain Lang.

Neurosci. Lett.

Clin. Neurophysiol.

Brain Functions and Oscillations. II. Integrative Brain Function. Neurophysiology and Cognitive Processes

Functional mapping of human sensorimotor cortex with electrocorticographic spectral analysis: I. Alpha and beta event-related desynchronization

Brain

Functional mapping of human sensorimotor cortex with electrocorticographic spectral analysis: II. Event-related synchronization in the gamma band

Brain

Human gamma band activity and perception of a gestalt

J. Neurosci.

Coherence of gamma-band EEG activity as a basis for associative learning

Nature