Highlights
- •Experimental pain had opposite effects on corticomotor excitability in hand and knee.
- •Effects in target muscles did not persist beyond period of pain.
- •Hand pain elicited a remote increase in corticomotor excitability in a knee muscle.
- •No effect of knee pain on corticomotor excitability in a hand muscle.
Abstract
Acute pain elicits a well-known inhibitory effect on upper limb corticomotor excitability,
whereas the temporal effects of lower-limb experimental pain and pain in a remote
limb are less clear. The aim of this study was to compare the temporal corticomotor
excitability changes in the upper and lower limbs in response to acute upper and lower
limb pain. In a cross-over design, 13 participants (age 29 ± 9 years; 12 male) attended
2 sessions where experimental pain was induced by injecting hypertonic saline into
either the first dorsal interosseous (FDI) muscle or infrapatellar fat pad at the
knee, inducing a short-lasting pain experience scored on a numerical rating scale
(NRS). Motor evoked potentials (MEPs) in response to transcranial magnetic stimulation
were recorded in the FDI and vastus lateralis (VL) muscles before, during, and following
pain. Hand and knee pain NRS scores were not significantly different. Hand pain elicited
a short duration inhibition of the FDI MEPs (P < .0001) together with a facilitation of VL MEPs (P = .001) that outlasted the duration of pain. Knee pain elicited a short-duration
facilitation of VL MEPs (P = .003) with no significant effect in the FDI MEPs (P = .46). The findings indicate a limb-specific corticomotor response to experimental
pain that may be related to limb function.
Perspective
These data demonstrate the impact of acute, experimental pain on corticomotor excitability
in the upper and lower limbs. This facilitates our understanding of the effect of
pain on motor control of both local and distant muscles.
Key words
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: February 03, 2021
Accepted:
January 21,
2021
Received in revised form:
January 14,
2021
Received:
June 25,
2020
Footnotes
The study was funded by the Auckland University of Technology. TGN is part of the Center for Neuroplasticity and Pain (CNAP) supported by the Danish National Research Foundation (DNRF121).
Conflicts of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest.
Identification
Copyright
© 2021 by United States Association for the Study of Pain, Inc.
