Nociceptive laser-evoked brain potentials do not reflect nociceptive-specific neural activity.

摘要: Brief radiant laser pulses can be used to activate cutaneous Adelta and C nociceptors selectively elicit a number of transient brain responses [laser-evoked potentials (LEPs)] in the ongoing EEG. LEPs have been extensively past 30 years gain knowledge about cortical mechanisms underlying nociception pain humans, by assuming that they reflect at least neural activities uniquely or preferentially involved processing nociceptive input. Here, applying novel blind source separation algorithm (probabilistic independent component analysis) 124-channel event-related elicited random sequence non-nociceptive somatosensory, auditory, visual stimuli, we provide compelling evidence this assumption is incorrect: do not nociceptive-specific activity. Indeed, our results indicate entirely explained combination multimodal (i.e., also stimuli other sensory modalities) somatosensory-specific, but nociceptive-specific, both somatosensory stimuli). Regardless modality eliciting stimulus, magnitude correlated with subjective rating saliency, suggesting these are stimulus-triggered arousal attentional reorientation.