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Intracerebral EEG to investigate the role of the insula in nociception

A widely accepted notion is that one particular region of the “pain matrix”, the insula, plays a specific role in the perception of pain, and the activity recorded from this region is often considered as an objective signature of pain perception and its modulation. Taking advantage of the high spatio-temporal resolution of direct intracerebral recordings performed in patients undergoing pre-surgical evaluation of focal intractable epilepsy, we recently provided compelling evidence to the contrary. More specifically, we demonstrated that both nociceptive (laser) and non-nociceptive (vibrotactile, auditory, visual) stimuli perceived as equally intense elicit robust local field potentials (LFPs) in the anterior and posterior insula, with matching spatial distributions. These findings argue against the notion that LFPs recorded from the human insula reflect the brain activity through which pain emerges from nociception in the human brain.
Another finding that emerged from our intracerebral investigations is that nociceptive stimuli, but not tactile, auditory, and visual stimuli, elicit an early-latency burst of gamma-band oscillations (GBOs, 40-90 Hz) at several insular locations. Because perception has been proposed to emerge from temporal binding or synchronization of stimulus-evoked neural activity through GBOs, nociceptive GBOs generated in the insula could reflect cortical activity through which the perception of pain arises from nociceptive input in the human brain. These pain-related GBOs generated in the insula could also contribute to the generation of higher-order responses aiming at preserving the individual’s integrity.
Whereas insular LFPs appear to reflect multimodal activity unspecific for pain, the selective enhancement of insular GBOs elicited by nociceptive stimuli could reflect activity related to the processing of spinothalamic input, nociception, and/or the perception of pain.

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Researchers involved

Publications

2020

Insular responses to transient painful and non-painful thermal and mechanical spinothalamic stimuli recorded using intracerebral EEG

Nature: Scientific Reports

Liberati G, Mulders D, Algoet M, van den Broeke EN, Ferrao Santos S, Ribeiro Vaz JG, Raftopoulos C, Mouraux A.

10: 22319

2018

Tonic thermonociceptive stimulation selectively modulates ongoing neural oscillations in the human posterior insula: evidence from intracerebral EEG

Neuroimage

Liberati G, Algoet M, Ferrao Santos S, Ribeiro-Vaz JG, Raftopoulos C, Mouraux A.

188:70-83

2018

Habituation of phase-locked local field potentials and gamma-band oscillations recorded from the human insula

Nature: Scientific Reports

Liberati G, Algoet M, Klöcker A, Ferrao Santos S, Ribeiro-Vaz JG, Raftopoulos C, Mouraux A.

8(1): 8265

2017

Gamma-band oscillations preferential for nociception can be recorded in the human insula

Cerebral Cortex

Liberati G, Klöcker A, Algoet M, Mulders D, Safronova MM, Ferrao Santos S, Vaz JG, Raftopoulos C, Mouraux A.

28(10):3650-3664.

2016

Nociceptive local field potentials recorded from the human insula are not specific for nociception

PLoS Biology

Liberati G, Klocker A, Safronova MM, Ferrao Santos S, Ribeiro Vaz JG, Raftopoulos C, Mouraux A.

14(1):e1002345

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