New paper out in PAIN Reports.

Paying attention to the source causing pain augments the feeling of pain, as opposed to when attending a distracting stimulus. In collaboration with Prof Petra Schweinhardt, we show the neurophysiological correlates of this percept, which emphasize oscillatory brain activity in the somatosensory cortex in the beta frequency range (15-35Hz). Beta brain rhythms are considered in many recent studies as signal markers of top-down (“control”) signaling in large brain networks of the human brain.

From the paper:

“Background: Induced synchronized brain activity, particularly in the beta-frequency range, has rarely been investigated in human electrophysiological studies of attentional modulation of the perception of nociceptive stimuli.

Methods: We measured time-resolved brain responses to nociceptive stimuli in healthy subjects (final data set: n = 17) using magnetoencephalography (MEG). In addition to investigating evoked responses as previous studies, we tested whether synchronized beta activity induced by nociceptive stimuli differs between 2 attentional conditions. Subjects were presented simultaneously with 2 stimulus modalities (pain-producing intraepidermal electrical stimuli and visual stimuli) in 2 different experimental conditions, ie, "attention to pain" and "attention to color." Pain ratings between conditions were compared using a 2-sided paired-sample t test; MEG data were analyzed with Brainstorm.

Results: Pain ratings were significantly higher in the "attention to pain" compared with the "attention to color" condition. Peak amplitudes of the evoked responses were significantly larger in the "attention to pain" condition bilaterally in the insula and secondary somatosensory cortex, and in the primary somatosensory cortex (SI) contralateral to stimulation. Induced responses to painful stimuli were significantly stronger in contralateral SI in the beta-frequency range in the "attention to pain" condition.

Conclusions: This study replicates previous reports w.r.t. the attentional modulation of evoked responses and suggests a functional role of induced oscillatory activity in the beta frequency in top-down modulation of nociceptive stimuli.”