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This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) All Versions of this Article: 92/3/1825    most recent 00260.2004v1 Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in ISI Web of Science Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via ISI Web of Science (6) Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Ploner, M. Articles by Schnitzler, A. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Ploner, M. Articles by Schnitzler, A.

Pain Facilitates Tactile Processing in Human Somatosensory Cortices

Department of Neurology, Heinrich-Heine-University, 40225 Düsseldorf, Germany

Submitted 17 March 2004; accepted in final form 26 April 2004

Touch and pain are intimately related modalities. Despite a substantial overlap in their cortical representations interactions between both modalities are largely unknown at the cortical level. We therefore used magnetoencephalography and selective nociceptive cutaneous laser stimulation to investigate the effects of brief painful stimuli on cortical processing of touch. Using a conditioning test stimulus paradigm, our results show that painful conditioning stimuli facilitate processing of tactile test stimuli applied 500 ms later. This facilitation applies to cortical responses later than 40 ms originating from primary (S1) and secondary (S2) somatosensory cortices but not to earlier S1 responses. By contrast, tactile conditioning stimuli yield a decrease of early as well as late responses to tactile test stimuli. Control experiments show that pain-induced facilitation of tactile processing is not restricted to the site of the painful conditioning stimulus, whereas auditory conditioning does not yield a comparable facilitation. Apart from a lack of spatial specificity, the facilitating effect of pain closely resembles attentional effects on cortical processing of tactile stimuli. Thus these findings may represent a physiological correlate of an alerting function of pain as a change in the internal state to prepare for processing signals of particular relevance.

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