title: Decoding an individual's sensitivity to pain from the multivariate analysis of EEG data.
abstract: The perception of pain is characterized by its tremendous intra- and interindividual variability. Different individuals perceive the very same painful event largely differently. Here, we aimed to predict the individual pain sensitivity from brain activity. We repeatedly applied identical painful stimuli to healthy human subjects and recorded brain activity by using electroencephalography (EEG). We applied a multivariate pattern analysis to the time-frequency transformed single-trial EEG responses. Our results show that a classifier trained on a group of healthy individuals can predict another individual's pain sensitivity with an accuracy of 83%. Classification accuracy depended on pain-evoked responses at about 8 Hz and pain-induced gamma oscillations at about 80 Hz. These results reveal that the temporal-spectral pattern of pain-related neuronal responses provides valuable information about the perception of pain. Beyond, our approach may help to establish an objective neuronal marker of pain sensitivity which can potentially be recorded from a single EEG electrode.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, Technische Universität München, Ismaninger Strasse 22, 81675 Munich, Germany. eschulz@lrz.tum.de
authors.forename: Enrico
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Schulz
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Zherdin
authors.forename: Laura
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Tiemann
authors.forename: Claudia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Plant
authors.forename: Markus
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ploner
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology; D058748:Pain Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D017288:Pain Threshold / Q000502:physiology*; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; D055815:Young Adult