Simultaneous tracking of psychophysical detection thresholds and evoked potentials to study nociceptive processing

Measuring altered nociceptive processing involved in chronic pain is difficult due to a lack of objective methods. Potential methods to characterize human nociceptive processing involve measuring neurophysiological activity and psychophysical responses to well-defined stimuli. To reliably measure ne...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Behavior research methods Vol. 52; no. 4; pp. 1617 - 1628
Main Authors:	van den Berg, Boudewijn, Doll, Robert J., Mentink, Alexander L.H., Siebenga, Pieter S., Groeneveld, Geert J., Buitenweg, Jan R.
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	New York Springer US 01-08-2020 Springer Nature B.V
Subjects:	Behavioral Science and Psychology Chronic pain Cognitive Psychology EEG Electrical stimuli Evoked Potentials Humans Nociception Pain perception Probability Psychology Psychophysics Psychometric curve Threshold tracking Nociceptive processing Evoked potential Nociceptive detection threshold Linear mixed regression Generalized linear mixed regression
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Summary:	Measuring altered nociceptive processing involved in chronic pain is difficult due to a lack of objective methods. Potential methods to characterize human nociceptive processing involve measuring neurophysiological activity and psychophysical responses to well-defined stimuli. To reliably measure neurophysiological activity in response to nociceptive stimulation using EEG, synchronized activation of nerve fibers and a large number of stimuli are required. On the other hand, to reliably measure psychophysical detection thresholds, selection of stimulus amplitudes around the detection threshold and many stimulus–response pairs are required. Combining the two techniques helps in quantifying the properties of nociceptive processing related to detected and non-detected stimuli around the detection threshold. The two techniques were combined in an experiment including 20 healthy participants to study the effect of intra-epidermal electrical stimulus properties (i.e. amplitude, single- or double-pulse and trial number) on the detection thresholds and vertex potentials. Generalized mixed regression and linear mixed regression were used to quantify the psychophysical detection probability and neurophysiological EEG responses, respectively. It was shown that the detection probability is significantly modulated by the stimulus amplitude, trial number, and the interaction between stimulus type and amplitude. Furthermore, EEG responses were significantly modulated by stimulus detection and trial number. Hence, we successfully demonstrated the possibility to simultaneously obtain information on psychophysical and neurophysiological properties of nociceptive processing. These results warrant further investigation of the potential of this method to observe altered nociceptive processing.
Bibliography:	ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23
ISSN:	1554-3528 1554-351X 1554-3528
DOI:	10.3758/s13428-019-01338-7