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Papers of the Week


Papers: 2 Apr 2022 - 8 Apr 2022

RESEARCH TYPE:
Psychology


Human Studies


2022 Apr 05


Atten Percept Psychophys

Observation of nociceptive detection thresholds and cortical evoked potentials: Go/no-go versus two-interval forced choice.

Authors

van den Berg B, Vanwinsen L, Pezzali G, Buitenweg JR
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2022 Apr 05.
PMID: 35381960.

Abstract

Pain scientists and clinicians search for objective measures of altered nociceptive processing to study and stratify chronic pain patients. Nociceptive processing can be studied by observing a combination of nociceptive detection thresholds and evoked potentials. However, it is unknown whether the nociceptive detection threshold measured using a go-/no-go (GN) procedure can be biased by a response criterion. In this study, we compared nociceptive detection thresholds, psychometric slopes, and central evoked potentials obtained during a GN procedure with those obtained during a two-interval forced choice (2IFC) procedure to determine (1) if the nociceptive detection threshold during a GN procedure is biased by a criterion and (2) to determine if nociceptive evoked potentials observed in response to stimuli around the detection threshold are biased by a criterion. We found that the detection threshold was higher when assessed using a GN procedure in comparison with the 2IFC procedure. During a GN procedure, the average P2 component increased proportionally when averaged with respect to detection probability, but showed on-off behavior when averaged with respect to stimulus detection. During a 2IFC procedure, the average P2 component increased nonlinearly when averaged with respect to detection probability. These data suggest that nociceptive detection thresholds estimated using a GN procedure are subject to a response criterion.