Program in Neuroscience, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21201, USA.
Department of Neural and Pain Sciences, University of Maryland School of Dentistry, Baltimore, MD 21201, USA.
Cereb Cortex. 2020 Nov 3;30(12):6069-6082. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhaa124.
Previous research has observed that the speed of alpha band oscillations (8-12 Hz range) recorded during resting electroencephalography is slowed in chronic pain patients. While this slowing may reflect pathological changes that occur during the chronification of pain, an alternative explanation is that healthy individuals with slower alpha oscillations are more sensitive to prolonged pain, and by extension, more susceptible to developing chronic pain. To test this hypothesis, we examined the relationship between the pain-free, resting alpha oscillation speed of healthy individuals and their sensitivity to two models of prolonged pain, Phasic Heat Pain and Capsaicin Heat Pain, at two visits separated by 8 weeks on average (n = 61 Visit 1, n = 46 Visit 2). We observed that the speed of an individual's pain-free alpha oscillations was negatively correlated with sensitivity to both models and that this relationship was reliable across short (minutes) and long (weeks) timescales. Furthermore, the speed of pain-free alpha oscillations can successfully identify the most pain sensitive individuals, which we validated on data from a separate, independent study. These results suggest that alpha oscillation speed is a reliable biomarker of prolonged pain sensitivity with potential for prospectively identifying pain sensitivity in the clinic.
先前的研究观察到，在静息脑电图中记录到的 alpha 波段振荡（8-12 Hz 范围）的速度在慢性疼痛患者中减慢。虽然这种减慢可能反映了疼痛慢性化过程中发生的病理变化，但另一种解释是，alpha 振荡较慢的健康个体对长时间的疼痛更敏感，因此更容易发展为慢性疼痛。为了验证这一假设，我们研究了健康个体在无疼痛静息状态下 alpha 振荡速度与他们对两种长时间疼痛模型（阶段性热痛和辣椒素热痛）的敏感性之间的关系，两次就诊平均间隔 8 周（n=61 次就诊 1，n=46 次就诊 2）。我们观察到，个体无疼痛时 alpha 振荡的速度与两种模型的敏感性呈负相关，并且这种关系在短（分钟）和长（周）时间尺度上都是可靠的。此外，无疼痛 alpha 振荡的速度可以成功识别最敏感的个体，我们在来自另一个独立研究的数据上验证了这一结果。这些结果表明，alpha 振荡速度是长时间疼痛敏感性的可靠生物标志物，具有在临床中前瞻性识别疼痛敏感性的潜力。
