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Cerebral Cortex Advance Access originally published online on July 20, 2005
Cerebral Cortex 2006 16(4):537-540; doi:10.1093/cercor/bhj001
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© The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oupjournals.org

Pain Suppresses Spontaneous Brain Rhythms

Markus Ploner, Joachim Gross, Lars Timmermann, Bettina Pollok and Alfons Schnitzler

Department of Neurology, Heinrich-Heine-University, 40225 Düsseldorf, Germany

Address correspondence to Markus Ploner or Alfons Schnitzler, Department of Neurology, Heinrich-Heine-University, Moorenstrasse 5, 40225 Düsseldorf, Germany. Email: ploner{at}neurologie.uni-duesseldorf.de, schnitza{at}uni-duesseldorf.de.

The neuronal activity of the resting human brain is dominated by spontaneous oscillatory activity of primary visual, somatosensory and motor areas. These spontaneous brain rhythms are related to the functional state of a system. A higher amplitude of oscillatory activity is thought to reflect an idling state, whereas a lower amplitude is associated with activation and higher excitability of the specific system. Here, we used magnetoencephalography to investigate the effects of pain on spontaneous brain rhythms. Our results show that a focally applied brief painful stimulus globally suppresses spontaneous oscillations in somatosensory, motor and visual areas. This global suppression contrasts with the regionally specific suppressions of other modalities and shows that pain induces a widespread change in cortical function and excitability. This global change in excitability may reflect the alerting function of pain which opens the gates for processing of and reacting to stimuli of existential relevance.

Key Words: cutaneous laser stimulation • human • magnetoencephalography • nociception • oscillations • pain • somatosensory


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[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


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