"Characterization of spatiotemporal dynamics of binary and graded tonic pain in humans using intracranial recordings".

We investigated the neural encoding of pain psychophysics across 16 brain regions during a continuous thermal stimulus in humans. Mixed-effects models were used to analyze trends across 20 human subjects. Using intracranial electrodes, we show a parametric relationship between behavioral responses and HFA during ongoing pain. We found that HFA in cognitive and emotional pain processing regions was closely associated with pain evaluation at the stimulus onset, end, or both. The neural encoding of subjective pain intensity, measured by a visual analog scale, differed from that of binary pain intensity. Perception and psychophysical correlates to pain depend on how patients are asked to evaluate it. Our findings provide evidence that HFA can serve as a neural marker within specific brain regions of behavioral pain responses, as measured by sEEG.