Cerebral oscillations of pain

总结 慢性疼痛障碍是所有疾病中最沉重的负担之一，就其对患者的影响而言， 个人和社会的成本。慢性疼痛的新治疗方法的发展 依赖于涉及啮齿动物疼痛模型的遗传和分子方法的基础研究，但现有的药物 通常仅对少数患者提供非常有限的缓解。其结果是， 患有慢性疼痛的人得不到治疗，只能部分缓解。越来越多的证据表明 疼痛研究领域内外的研究表明，神经振荡反映了认知，情感， 和感觉过程，这些都是疼痛体验的组成部分。此外，我们可以针对这些 振动模式来改变感知特别是，α波段活动与慢性疼痛有关， 我们最近的大量工作和初步发现表明，α可以可靠地预测未来的敏感性， 健康受试者在未来几分钟到几周内经历的疼痛。在研究中，我们使用 同步脑电图功能磁共振成像继续我们正在进行的工作阿尔法振荡作为疼痛机制，并扩大它 测试信号的特异性和敏感性，以及阿尔法、大脑网络和 痛苦这项工作将有助于提高对疼痛神经生物学的理解， 新的或改进的干预措施的脑靶点，并可能揭示一种预后生物标志物， 用于测试新的治疗方法和客观地评估个体的临床改善 基础

Summary Chronic pain disorders are amongst the most burdensome of all diseases in terms of their impact on the individual and the costs to society. The development of novel therapeutic approaches for chronic pain have relied on basic studies involving genetic and molecular approaches in rodent models of pain, but existing drugs generally provide very limited relief for only a small number of patients. The result is that a vast number of people with chronic pain go untreated and have only partial relief. There is substantial and growing evidence from within and outside the pain research fields that indicates neural oscillations reflect cognitive, emotional, and sensory processes, which are all components of the pain experience. Furthermore, we can target these oscillatory patterns to alter perception. In particular, alpha band activity has been associated with chronic pain, and our extensive recent work and preliminary findings indicate that alpha can reliably predict future sensitivity to pain experienced minutes to weeks in the future in healthy subjects. In the proposed studies, we use simultaneous EEG-fMRI to continue our ongoing work on alpha oscillations as pain mechanisms and extend it to test the specificity and sensitivity of the signals and the relationship between alpha, brain networks, and pain. The proposed work would lead to improved understanding of the neurobiology of pain, identify novel brain targets for new or improved interventions, and potentially reveal a prognostic biomarker that would be useful for testing new therapeutic approaches and objectively assessing clinical improvement on an individual basis.