Biomedical Signals and Systems, Technical Medical Centre, University of Twente, Drienerlolaan 5, PO Box 217, 7500 AE, Enschede, The Netherlands.
Centre for Human Drug Research, Zernikedreef 8, 2333 CL, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Exp Brain Res. 2022 Feb;240(2):631-649. doi: 10.1007/s00221-021-06284-5. Epub 2022 Jan 7.
Sleep deprivation has been shown to increase pain intensity and decrease pain thresholds in healthy subjects. In chronic pain patients, sleep impairment often worsens the perceived pain intensity. This increased pain perception is the result of altered nociceptive processing. We recently developed a method to quantify and monitor altered nociceptive processing by simultaneous tracking of psychophysical detection thresholds and recording of evoked cortical potentials during intra-epidermal electric stimulation. In this study, we assessed the sensitivity of nociceptive detection thresholds and evoked potentials to altered nociceptive processing after sleep deprivation in an exploratory study with 24 healthy male and 24 healthy female subjects. In each subject, we tracked nociceptive detection thresholds and recorded central evoked potentials in response to 180 single- and 180 double-pulse intra-epidermal electric stimuli. Results showed that the detection thresholds for single- and double-pulse stimuli and the average central evoked potential for single-pulse stimuli were significantly decreased after sleep deprivation. When analyzed separated by sex, these effects were only significant in the male population. Multivariate analysis showed that the decrease of central evoked potential was associated with a decrease of task-related evoked activity. Measurement repetition led to a decrease of the detection threshold to double-pulse stimuli in the mixed and the female population, but did not significantly affect any other outcome measures. These results suggest that simultaneous tracking of psychophysical detection thresholds and evoked potentials is a useful method to observe altered nociceptive processing after sleep deprivation, but is also sensitive to sex differences and measurement repetition.
睡眠剥夺已被证明会增加健康受试者的疼痛强度并降低疼痛阈值。在慢性疼痛患者中，睡眠障碍常常会使感知到的疼痛强度恶化。这种疼痛感知的增加是伤害性感受处理改变的结果。我们最近开发了一种方法，通过同时跟踪表皮内电刺激时的心理物理检测阈值和诱发皮质电位，来量化和监测伤害性感受处理的改变。在这项研究中，我们评估了 24 名健康男性和 24 名健康女性受试者在睡眠剥夺后的伤害性检测阈值和诱发电位对伤害性感受处理改变的敏感性。在每个受试者中，我们跟踪了伤害性检测阈值，并记录了 180 个单脉冲和 180 个双脉冲表皮内电刺激的中枢诱发电位。结果表明，单脉冲和双脉冲刺激的检测阈值以及单脉冲刺激的平均中枢诱发电位在睡眠剥夺后明显降低。当按性别进行分析时，这些影响仅在男性人群中显著。多变量分析表明，中枢诱发电位的降低与任务相关诱发活动的减少有关。测量重复导致混合和女性人群中双脉冲刺激的检测阈值降低，但并未显著影响任何其他结果测量。这些结果表明，同时跟踪心理物理检测阈值和诱发电位是观察睡眠剥夺后伤害性感受处理改变的一种有用方法，但也对性别差异和测量重复敏感。
