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EEG Spectral Analysis in Chronic Pain During Rest and Cognitive Reasoning
Diana Chertic1,2, Victor Dăbală1,2, Livia Livinț-Popa1,2
1Department of Neuroscience, "Iuliu Hațieganu" University of Medicine and Pharmacy, 400083 Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
Sensors (Basel, Switzerland)
|October 16, 2025
Summary
Chronic pain alters brain wave activity during cognitive tasks. Migraine patients showed specific changes linked to pain intensity, highlighting altered neural dynamics in chronic pain conditions.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Science
- Pain Research
Background:
- Chronic pain (CP) is a complex condition influenced by cognitive and emotional factors.
- Understanding neural dynamics during cognitive tasks is crucial for characterizing CP phenotypes.
- Previous research suggests alterations in brain activity patterns in individuals with chronic pain.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate functional significance of neural oscillatory dynamics during cognitive load transitions in distinct CP phenotypes.
- To compare electroencephalographic (EEG) activity between chronic pain patients (headache, migraine, spine-related) and healthy controls.
- To identify neurophysiological signatures associated with pain intensity and cognitive processing in CP.
Main Methods:
- Acquired continuous electroencephalographic (EEG) data from patients with headache, migraine, spine-related pain, and healthy controls.
- Recorded EEG during resting-state and three visual-cognitive-motor (VCM) tasks: reaction time, working memory, and associative learning.
- Analyzed frequency-specific oscillatory power changes (alpha, beta, delta, theta, gamma bands) related to cognitive load and CP phenotypes.
Main Results:
- Migraine patients exhibited alpha/beta power attenuation during cognitive processing, correlating with pain intensity.
- Migraine patients showed increased occipital alpha and gamma activity during working memory and associative learning compared to spine-related pain patients.
- Headache patients displayed elevated resting-state delta and gamma activity, with increased power across multiple bands under cognitive load compared to controls.
- Delta and theta activity during working memory tasks negatively correlated with pain intensity in headache patients.
Conclusions:
- Chronic pain is associated with frequency-specific alterations in resting-state and cognitive-load-related neural oscillatory dynamics.
- These alterations reflect impaired visual working memory processing and top-down modulation of stimuli in chronic pain.
- Neural oscillatory dynamics provide insights into the neurophysiological underpinnings of distinct chronic pain phenotypes.
