Neural signal offers objective measure of subjective experience.
Recordings from electrodes in the human brain may offer the first objective way to measure the intensity of pain. Researchers say that they have found a neural signal that correlates with the amount of pain that an individual feels. The signal could be used to refine pain-relief techniques that involve stimulating the brain with electricity, they say.
Single cells have previously been identified in the human brain that are active in pain, but their response is binary, signalling either pain or no pain. Now, Morten Kringelbach of the psychiatry department at the University of Oxford, UK, and his colleagues have identified low-frequency brain waves that emanate from two regions buried deep within the brain when a patient is in pain. The more pain that is experienced, the longer the waves last.
Kringelbach's team recorded activity from two electrodes positioned in the thalamus and the periaqueductal grey area of 12 awake people who had been undergoing deep-brain stimulation (DBS) for chronic pain. During the recording, the team touched either a painful or pain-free area of the patients' bodies and had patients rate their pain every minute. The duration of the waves — dubbed “pain spindles” — correlated with how intensely the patients felt their pain. “It is an objective measure that correlates with a subjective measure,” says Kringelbach, who presented the findings at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego, California, last week.
*This research opened up the opportunity for EEG-related products, such as Lanimo.
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