Although feeling pain and touch has long been considered inherently private, recent neuroimaging and neurophysiological studies hint at the social implications of this experience. Here we used somatosensory-evoked potentials (SEPs) to investigate whether mere observation of painful and tactile stimuli delivered to a model would modulate neural activity in the somatic system of an onlooker. Viewing video clips showing pain and tactile stimuli delivered to others, respectively, increased and decreased the amplitude of the P45 SEP component that reflects the activity of the primary somatosensory cortex (S1). These modulations correlated with the intensity but not with the unpleasantness of the pain and touch ascribed to the model or the aversion induced in the onlooker by the video clips. Thus, modulation of S1 activity contingent upon observation of others' pain and touch may reflect the mapping of sensory qualities of observed painful and tactile stimuli. Results indicate that the S1 is not only involved in the actual perception of pain and touch but also plays an important role in extracting somatic features from social interactions.

Abstract:This study aimed to characterize the neural generators of the steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) to repetitive, 6 Hz pattern-reversal stimulation. Multichannel scalp recordings of SSVEPs and dipole modeling techniques were combined with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and retinotopic mapping in order to estimate the locations of the cortical sources giving rise to the SSVEP elicited by pattern reversal. The time-varying SSVEP scalp topography indicated contributions from two major cortical sources, which were localized in the medial occipital and mid-temporal regions of the contralateral hemisphere. Colocalization of dipole locations with fMRI activation sites indicated that these two major sources of the SSVEP were located in primary visual cortex (V1) and in the motion sensitive (MT/V5) areas, respectively. Minor contributions from mid-occipital (V3A) and ventral occipital (V4/V8) areas were also considered. Comparison of SSVEP phase information with timing information collected in a previous transient VEP study (Di Russo et al. [2005] Neuroimage 24:874 -886) suggested that the sequence of cortical activation is similar for steady-state and transient stimulation. These results provide a detailed spatiotemporal profile of the cortical origins of the SSVEP, which should enhance its use as an efficient clinical tool for evaluating visual-cortical dysfunction as well as an investigative probe of the cortical mechanisms of visual-perceptual processing. Hum Brain Mapp 00: 000 -000, 2006.

No abstract