Fachartikel

The brain’s response to external painful stimuli can be assessed through contact heat evoked cortical potentials that enable the evaluation of the integrity of pain pathways. This work aims to improve the reliability of this diagnostic procedure by decoupling the effects of heat transfer and nerve fiber conduction. It is herein shown experimentally that the latency of the N2 contact heat evoked cortical potentials component is the most stable diagnostic parameter. The contribution of heat transfer to N2 contact heat evoked cortical potentials latency was modeled as a function of the subject’s pain threshold, allowing for the separation of nerve fiber pathology from thermodynamic influences.