Role of synchronized oscillatory brain activity for human pain perception.

The understanding of cortical pain processing in humans has significantly improved since the development of modern neuroimaging techniques. Non-invasive electrophysiological approaches such as electro- and magnetoencephalography have proven to be helpful tools for the real-time investigation of neuronal signals and synchronous communication between cortical areas. In particular, time-frequency decomposition of signals recorded with these techniques seems to be a promising approach because different pain-related oscillatory changes can be observed within different frequency bands, which are likely to be linked to specific sensory and motor functions. In this review we discuss the latest evidence on pain-induced time-frequency signals and propose that changes in oscillatory activity reflect an essential communication mechanism in the brain that is modulated during pain processing. The importance of synchronization processes for normal and pathological pain processing, such as chronic pain states, is discussed.