Department of Pain Management, The State Key Clinical Specialty in Pain Medicine, The Second Affiliated Hospital, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, China; CAS Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Beijing, China; Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China; Research Center of Brain Cognitive Neuroscience, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian, China.
CAS Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Beijing, China; Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Neuroimage. 2021 May 15;232:117892. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.117892. Epub 2021 Feb 19.
The brain and the spinal cord together make up the central nervous system (CNS). The functions of the human brain have been the focus of neuroscience research for a long time. However, the spinal cord is largely ignored, and the functional interaction of these two parts of the CNS is only partly understood. This study developed a novel method to simultaneously record spinal cord electrophysiology (SCE) and electroencephalography (EEG) signals and validated its performance using a classical resting-state study design with two experimental conditions: eyes-closed (EC) and eyes-open (EO). We recruited nine postherpetic neuralgia patients implanted with a spinal cord stimulator, which was modified to record SCE signals simultaneously with EEG signals. For both EEG and SCE, similar differences were found in delta- and alpha-band oscillations between the EC and EO conditions, and the spectral power of these frequency bands was able to predict EC/EO behaviors. Moreover, causal connectivity analysis suggested a top-down regulation in delta-band oscillations from the brain to the spinal cord. Altogether, this study demonstrates the validity of simultaneous SCE-EEG recording and shows that the novel method is a valuable tool to investigate the brain-spinal interaction. With this method, we can better unite knowledge about the brain and the spinal cord for a deeper understanding of the functions of the whole CNS.
大脑和脊髓共同构成了中枢神经系统（CNS）。人类大脑的功能一直是神经科学研究的焦点。然而，脊髓在很大程度上被忽视了，这两个 CNS 部分的功能相互作用只是部分被理解。本研究开发了一种新的方法，可同时记录脊髓电生理学（SCE）和脑电图（EEG）信号，并使用经典的静息态研究设计验证其性能，该设计具有两种实验条件：闭眼（EC）和睁眼（EO）。我们招募了九名接受带状疱疹后神经痛治疗并植入脊髓刺激器的患者，该刺激器经过改装，可同时记录 SCE 和 EEG 信号。对于 EEG 和 SCE，在 EC 和 EO 条件下，δ 和α波段振荡之间均发现了相似的差异，这些频带的频谱功率能够预测 EC/EO 行为。此外，因果连通性分析表明，在从大脑到脊髓的 δ 波段振荡中存在自上而下的调节。总之，这项研究证明了同时进行 SCE-EEG 记录的有效性，并表明该新方法是研究脑-脊髓相互作用的有价值工具。通过这种方法，我们可以更好地将大脑和脊髓的知识结合起来，以更深入地了解整个 CNS 的功能。
