Neurophysiological mediators of perceptual, motor and autonomic components of pain

疼痛通常被概念化为一种知觉现象。然而，疼痛的重要保护功能不仅取决于其感知成分，还取决于适当的运动和自主反应。此外，已知运动和自主过程在慢性疼痛的病理学和治疗中起重要作用。然而，大脑如何将有害刺激转化为运动和自主反应远不如其感知方面的研究和理解。此外，它仍然在很大程度上是未知的不同疼痛成分的大脑表征的变化是否是慢性疼痛的大脑病理学的一部分。该项目将全面研究大脑如何将疼痛刺激转化为感知，运动和自主方面的疼痛。我们将特别评估和比较这种翻译过程，不仅在短暂的疼痛刺激，而且在更持久的疼痛刺激，这是更接近慢性疼痛条件下的持续疼痛。因此，我们将进行一系列的实验，以评估知觉，运动和自主反应的疼痛刺激。将通过脑电图记录的最新时频分析评估脑活动。为了确定不同疼痛成分的脑活动的时空谱特征，将进行中介分析。该分析将产生全面的空间-时间-频谱图，将刺激特征转化为疼痛的感知、运动和自主成分。这些地图的比较将揭示与短暂和持久疼痛相关的大脑活动的组件特定和组件独立方面。这些分析的结果有望促进我们对不同时间尺度上疼痛不同成分的大脑过程的理解。了解健康人受试者的这些过程是研究这些过程及其在慢性疼痛患者中变化的重要基础。

Pain is commonly conceptualized as a perceptual phenomenon. However, the crucial protective function of pain not only depends on its perceptual component but also on appropriate motor and autonomic responses. Moreover, motor and autonomic processes are known to play an important role in the pathology and therapy of chronic pain. However, how the brain translates noxious stimuli into motor and autonomic responses is far less well studied and understood than its perceptual aspects. Moreover, it is still largely unknown whether changes of the brain representation of the different pain components are part of the cerebral pathology of chronic pain. The proposed project will comprehensively investigate how the brain translates painful stimuli into perceptual, motor and autonomic aspects of pain. We will specifically assess and compare this translation process not only during brief pain stimuli but also during longer-lasting painful stimulation, which is closer to ongoing pain in chronic pain conditions. We will therefore perform a series of experiments to assess perceptual, motor and autonomic responses to painful stimuli. Brain activity will be assessed by state-of-the-art time-frequency analyses of electroencephalographic recordings. To determine which spatial-temporal-spectral features of brain activity underlie the different pain components, mediation analyses will be performed. The analysis will yield comprehensive spatial-temporal-spectral maps of brain activity translating stimulus characteristics into perceptual, motor and autonomic components of pain. The comparison of these maps will reveal component-specific and component-independent aspects of brain activity related to brief and longer-lasting pain. The results of these analyses promise to advance our understanding of the brain processes underlying different components of pain on different time scales. Understanding these processes in healthy human subjects is an important basis for studying these processes and their changes in chronic pain patients.