Sleep
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Comparative Study
The effect of cutaneous and deep pain on the electroencephalogram during sleep--an experimental study.
The interaction between sleep and pain has been insufficiently studied, and no experiments have investigated whether pathologic sleep patterns as seen in pain patients can be replicated experimentally by well-defined pain stimuli. An experimental model would therefore be valuable for further studies on the interaction between pain and sleep. In this study, three well-defined experimental stimuli (muscle, joint, and cutaneous pain) were applied during sleep, and the electroencephalogram (EEG) pattern was quantified. ⋯ There were several differences in the responses from the nine EEG channels, but no derivation seemed especially sensitive to detect the evoked changes. The study highlights the complexity of pain on the sleep EEG. The experimental model has shown that pain from different body structures, as well as signals from various EEG derivations, may give different responses in sleep microstructure.