Institute for Human Movement and Medical Sciences, Niigata University of Health and Welfare, Niigata, Japan.
Department of Physical Therapy, Faculty of Rehabilitation, Niigata University of Health and Welfare, Niigata, Japan.
Eur J Pain. 2022 Feb;26(2):349-355. doi: 10.1002/ejp.1863. Epub 2021 Sep 22.
Patients with chronic pain exhibit hypervigilance (heightened responsiveness to stimuli) to innocuous auditory stimuli as well as noxious stimuli. "Generalized hypervigilance" suggests that individuals who show heightened responsiveness to one sensory system also show hypervigilance to other modalities. However, research exploring the existence of generalized hypervigilance in healthy subjects is limited.
We investigated whether hypervigilance to pain is associated with auditory stimuli in healthy subjects using the pain vigilance and awareness questionnaire (PVAQ) and auditory change-related cortical responses (ACRs). ACRs are thought to reflect a change detection system, based on preceding sensory memory. We recorded ACRs under conditions that varied in terms of the accumulation of sensory memory as follows: short-ACR, with short preceding continuous stimuli and long-ACR, with long preceding continuous stimuli. In addition, the attention to pain (PVAQ-AP) and attention to changes in pain (PVAQ-ACP) subscales were evaluated.
Amplitudes of long-ACR showed significant positive correlations with PVAQ-ACP, whereas those of short-ACR did not show any significant correlations.
Generalized hypervigilance may be observed even in healthy subjects. ACR may be a useful index to evaluate the hypervigilance state in the human brain.
慢性疼痛患者对无害的听觉刺激和有害刺激表现出过度警觉（对刺激的反应增强）。“泛化过度警觉”表明，对一种感觉系统反应增强的个体也对其他感觉模式表现出过度警觉。然而，探索健康受试者中是否存在泛化过度警觉的研究有限。
我们使用疼痛警觉和意识问卷（PVAQ）和听觉变化相关皮质反应（ACRs）来研究健康受试者的疼痛警觉是否与听觉刺激有关。ACRs 被认为反映了一种基于先前感觉记忆的变化检测系统。我们在如下不同的感觉记忆积累条件下记录 ACRs：短 ACR，具有短的先前连续刺激，以及长 ACR，具有长的先前连续刺激。此外，评估了疼痛注意（PVAQ-AP）和疼痛变化注意（PVAQ-ACP）分量表。
长 ACR 的振幅与 PVAQ-ACP 呈显著正相关，而短 ACR 的振幅则没有显著相关性。
即使在健康受试者中也可能观察到泛化过度警觉。ACR 可能是评估人类大脑过度警觉状态的有用指标。
