title: Neuronal Oscillations in Various Frequency Bands Differ between Pain and Touch.
abstract: Although humans are generally capable of distinguishing single events of pain or touch, recent research suggested that both modalities activate a network of similar brain regions. By contrast, less attention has been paid to which processes uniquely contribute to each modality. The present study investigated the neuronal oscillations that enable a subject to process pain and touch as well as to evaluate the intensity of both modalities by means of Electroencephalography. Nineteen healthy subjects were asked to rate the intensity of each stimulus at single trial level. By computing Linear mixed effects models (LME) encoding of both modalities was explored by relating stimulus intensities to brain responses. While the intensity of single touch trials is encoded only by theta activity, pain perception is encoded by theta, alpha and gamma activity. Beta activity in the tactile domain shows an on/off like characteristic in response to touch which was not observed in the pain domain. Our results enhance recent findings pointing to the contribution of different neuronal oscillations to the processing of nociceptive and tactile stimuli.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, Technische Universität MünchenMunich, Germany; TUM-Neuroimaging Center, Technische Universität MünchenMunich, Germany; Neurophysics Group, Department of Neurology, Charité-Universitätsmedizin BerlinBerlin, Germany.
authors.forename: Georgios
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Michail
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, Technische Universität MünchenMunich, Germany; TUM-Neuroimaging Center, Technische Universität MünchenMunich, Germany.
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Dresel
authors.affiliation: Department of Theoretical Methods, Institute of Measurement Science, Slovak Academy of Sciences Bratislava, Slovak Republic.
authors.forename: Viktor
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Witkovský
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, Technische Universität München Munich, Germany.
authors.forename: Anne
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Stankewitz
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, Technische Universität MünchenMunich, Germany; TUM-Neuroimaging Center, Technische Universität MünchenMunich, Germany; Oxford Centre for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of OxfordOxford, UK.
authors.forename: Enrico
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Schulz
keywords: EEG; intensity coding; neuronal oscillations; pain; perception; time-frequency analysis; touch