Cortical activity during the wind-up of flexion reflex and pain: a magnetoencephalographic study using time-frequency analysis

Wind-up is a nociceptive-specific phenomenon in which pain sensations are facilitated, in a frequency-dependent manner, by the repeated application of noxious stimuli of constant intensity, with invariant tactile sensations. Thus, cortical activities during wind-up could be an alteration associated with pain potentiation. We aimed to investigate somatosensory-evoked cortical responses and induced brain oscillations during wind-up by recording magnetoencephalograms. Wind-up was produced by the application of 11 consecutive electrical stimuli to the sural nerve, repeated at a frequency of 1 Hz without varying the intensity. The augmentation of flexion reflexes and pain rating scores were measured simultaneously as an index of wind-up. In the time-frequency analyses, the γ-band late event-related synchronization and the β-band event-related desynchronization were observed in the primary somatosensory region and the bilateral operculo-insular region, respectively. Repetitive exposure to the stimuli enhanced these activities, along with an increase in the flexion reflex magnitude. The evoked cortical activity reflected novelty, with no alteration to these repetitive stimuli. Observed oscillations enhanced by repetitive stimulation at a constant intensity could reflect a pain mechanism associated with wind-up.