Neurophysiological mediators of perceptual, motor and autonomic components of pain

疼痛通常被认为是一种感知现象。然而，疼痛的关键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，运动和自主神经过程在慢性疼痛的病理和治疗中起着重要作用。然而，大脑如何将有害刺激转化为运动和自主反应的研究和理解远远不如其感知方面。此外，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的一部分，这在很大程度上仍然是未知的。该项目将全面研究大脑如何将疼痛刺激转化为疼痛的感知、运动和自主方面。我们将专门评估和比较这种转化过程，不仅在短暂的疼痛刺激下，而且在更持久的疼痛刺激下，这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来评估感知、运动和自主神经对疼痛刺激的反应。脑活动将通过脑电图记录的最先进的时频分析进行评估。为了确定大脑活动的哪些时空光谱特征是不同疼痛成分的基础，将进行中介分析。这项分析将产生全面的大脑活动的时空频谱图，将刺激特征转化为疼痛的感知、运动和自主成分。这些图谱的比较将揭示与短暂和持久疼痛相关的大脑活动的特定和独立的方面。这些分析的结果有望促进我们对不同时间尺度上不同疼痛成分背后的大脑过程的理解。了解健康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的变化的重要基础。

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.