# Cerebral oscillations of pain

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND BALTIMORE · 2022 · $385,492

## Abstract

Summary
Chronic pain disorders are amongst the most burdensome of all diseases in terms of their impact on the
individual and the costs to society. The development of novel therapeutic approaches for chronic pain have
relied on basic studies involving genetic and molecular approaches in rodent models of pain, but existing drugs
generally provide very limited relief for only a small number of patients. The result is that a vast number of
people with chronic pain go untreated and have only partial relief. There is substantial and growing evidence
from within and outside the pain research fields that indicates neural oscillations reflect cognitive, emotional,
and sensory processes, which are all components of the pain experience. Furthermore, we can target these
oscillatory patterns to alter perception. In particular, alpha band activity has been associated with chronic pain,
and our extensive recent work and preliminary findings indicate that alpha can reliably predict future sensitivity
to pain experienced minutes to weeks in the future in healthy subjects. In the proposed studies, we use
simultaneous EEG-fMRI to continue our ongoing work on alpha oscillations as pain mechanisms and extend it
to test the specificity and sensitivity of the signals and the relationship between alpha, brain networks, and
pain. The proposed work would lead to improved understanding of the neurobiology of pain, identify novel
brain targets for new or improved interventions, and potentially reveal a prognostic biomarker that would be
useful for testing new therapeutic approaches and objectively assessing clinical improvement on an individual
basis.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10442525
- **Project number:** 5R01NS112356-04
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND BALTIMORE
- **Principal Investigator:** Joyce Teixeira Da Silva
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $385,492
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-09-15 → 2025-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10442525

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10442525, Cerebral oscillations of pain (5R01NS112356-04). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10442525. Licensed CC0.

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