• Mark P Jensen, Leslie H Sherlin, Robert L Askew, Felipe Fregni, Gregory Witkop, Ann Gianas, Jon D Howe, and Shahin Hakimian.
• Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA. mjensen@uw.edu
• Clin Neurophysiol. 2013 Oct 1;124(10):2016-24.

ObjectiveTo (1) evaluate the effects of a single session of four non-pharmacological pain interventions, relative to a sham tDCS procedure, on pain and electroencephalogram- (EEG-) assessed brain oscillations, and (2) determine the extent to which procedure-related changes in pain intensity are associated with changes in brain oscillations.Methods30 individuals with spinal cord injury and chronic pain were given an EEG and administered measures of pain before and after five procedures (hypnosis, meditation, transcranial direct current stimulation [tDCS], neurofeedback, and a control sham tDCS procedure).ResultsEach procedure was associated with a different pattern of changes in brain activity, and all active procedures were significantly different from the control procedure in at least three bandwidths. Very weak and mostly non-significant associations were found between changes in EEG-assessed brain activity and pain.ConclusionsDifferent non-pharmacological pain treatments have distinctive effects on brain oscillation patterns. However, changes in EEG-assessed brain oscillations are not significantly associated with changes in pain, and therefore such changes do not appear useful for explaining the benefits of these treatments.SignificanceThe results provide new findings regarding the unique effects of four non-pharmacological treatments on pain and brain activity.Copyright © 2013 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

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