ArticleCerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991)2020
Sensorimotor Peak Alpha Frequency Is a Reliable Biomarker of Prolonged Pain Sensitivity.
Article in Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991), 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to 2 registered trials, which are not on this map. Cited by 46 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Non-invasive Neurophysiological Methods in Predicting and Evaluating Postoperative Pain in Patients Undergoing Major Thoracic Surgery
The Ability of Brain Waves Activity to Detect Patient Susceptibility to Post-Operative Pain
Who cites it
46 citing papers in PubMed, 111 citations in OpenAlex.
- Modulation of evoked alpha oscillatory activity in the frontocentral region during analgesia by non-invasive brain stimulation.Neurotherapeutics : the journal of the American Society for Experimental NeuroTherapeutics · 2026Trial
- Analgesic effects and neural oscillatory mechanisms of music-synchronized virtual reality intervention.Journal of neuroengineering and rehabilitation · 2025Trial
- Peak Alpha Frequency Is Not Significantly Altered by Five Days of Experimental Pain and Repetitive Transcranial Stimulation of the Left Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex.The European journal of neuroscience · 2025Trial
- Analgesic effects of high-frequency rTMS on pain anticipation and perception.Communications biology · 2024Trial
- Electroencephalography research in neuropathic pain (Review).Molecular medicine reports · 2026Review
- Article
- Contextual Modulation of Fronto-Central, Parietal, and Global Peak Alpha Frequency.European journal of pain (London, England) · 2026Article
- Association between resting-state alpha oscillations and postoperative pain following endodontic treatment.Odontology · 2026Article
- Association of widespread pain and peak alpha frequency cannot be isolated to a single network.Pain reports · 2026Article
- Altered cortical alpha modulations and connectivity in complex regional pain syndrome.The journal of pain · 2026Article
- Individual differences in conditioned pain modulation are associated with alpha oscillations.Pain · 2026Article
- Peak alpha frequency is associated with pain severity in Long COVID patients with new-onset chronic pain.Frontiers in pain research (Lausanne, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) above individual peak alpha frequency (PAF) does not shift PAF or experimental pain sensitivity: an exploratory study.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2026Article
- EEG power spectra encode both labour pain intensity and uterine contractions during the latent phase of labour.British journal of anaesthesia · 2025Article
- Article
- Article
- Neuropsychological mechanisms of observational learning in human placebo effects.Psychopharmacology · 2025Review
- Pain and the Brain: A Systematic Review of Methods, EEG Biomarkers, Limitations, and Future Directions.Neurology international · 2025Review
- Alpha and Theta Oscillations Associated With Behavioral Phenotypes of Pain-Attention Interaction.Brain and behavior · 2025Article
- Neuroplastic Responses to Chiropractic Care: Broad Impacts on Pain, Mood, Sleep, and Quality of Life.Brain sciences · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Previous research has observed that the speed of alpha band oscillations (8-12 Hz range) recorded during resting electroencephalography is slowed in chronic pain patients. While this slowing may reflect pathological changes that occur during the chronification of pain, an alternative explanation is that healthy individuals with slower alpha oscillations are more sensitive to prolonged pain, and by extension, more susceptible to developing chronic pain. To test this hypothesis, we examined the relationship between the pain-free, resting alpha oscillation speed of healthy individuals and their sensitivity to two models of prolonged pain, Phasic Heat Pain and Capsaicin Heat Pain, at two visits separated by 8 weeks on average (n = 61 Visit 1, n = 46 Visit 2). We observed that the speed of an individual's pain-free alpha oscillations was negatively correlated with sensitivity to both models and that this relationship was reliable across short (minutes) and long (weeks) timescales. Furthermore, the speed of pain-free alpha oscillations can successfully identify the most pain sensitive individuals, which we validated on data from a separate, independent study. These results suggest that alpha oscillation speed is a reliable biomarker of prolonged pain sensitivity with potential for prospectively identifying pain sensitivity in the clinic.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.