Description
- Abstract:
- Chronic pain is a common medical condition across the globe, which impedes the daily lives of sufferers, and about which we have only a limited understanding of the neurologic basis of. We also lack truly objective ways to measure pain, and most interested studies rely on questionnaires, which may be inaccurate, confounded by other aspects of a patient’s experience, and in some cases, may be difficult to use. In order to develop a biomarker for pain, and to test evidence from rodents that theta oscillations caused by thalamocortical dysrhythmia are associated with nociception, we asked 25 healthy volunteers to participate in a cold pressor test during an electroencephalographic recording. We found increased frontal theta synchrony (Z scores from 3.13-3.60) when comparing a lower pain condition to a higher pain condition, and decreased broad-spectrum power at posterior electrodes. We also analyzed coherence between several pairs of electrodes, and found a number of significant changes. These findings were partially supported by previous research, but the diversity of results from the existing literature makes it difficult to discern a single consensus trend. Based on the findings presented here, the Saab laboratory has begun a number of trials to expand upon and verify these findings in clinical chronic pain patients.
- Notes:
- Thesis (Sc. M.)--Brown University, 2017
Access Conditions
- Rights
- In Copyright
- Restrictions on Use
- Collection is open for research.
Citation
Levitt, Joshua,
"Cortical Mapping of Nociception: An Electroencephalographic Approach"
(2017).
Biomedical Engineering Theses and Dissertations.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://doi.org/10.7301/Z0833QF7
Relations
Collection:
-
Biomedical Engineering Theses and Dissertations
Theses and Dissertations for the Biomedical Engineering department....