Tech Shares Pain Perception Measured by Brain Waves

On a scale of one to 10, how much pain are you in?

This simple method is still used in doctors' offices, clinics and hospitals, but how do I know if my five out of 10 matches yours?

New early-stage platform aims to do more objectively measure and share our individual perceptions of pain. It measures the brain activity of two people to understand how their experiences compare and recreate one person's pain for the other. The platform was developed through a partnership with a major Tokyo telecommunications company. NTT Dokomo and launch PaMeLaabbreviation for “Pain Measurement Laboratory”, in Osaka, Japan.

This is part of the project from Docomo called Feel the technology. “We are developing a human empowerment platform designed to deepen understanding between people,” a Docomo spokesperson said. IEEE spectrum by email. (The responses were originally provided in Japanese and translated by Docomo's public relations department.) “We used to focus on the sharing movement, touchAnd taste– feelings that by their nature are difficult to express and convey. This time our focus is on pain, another feeling that is difficult to articulate.”

Docomo demonstrated the platform last month at a trade show United Exhibition of Advanced Technologies (SEATEC), Japan's largest electronics exhibition.

How general pain perception technology works

The system consists of three components: a pain sensor, a platform for assessing sensitivity differences, and a heat-based triggering device.

Firstly, the system uses electroencephalography (EEG) to measure brain waves and uses an artificial intelligence model to “visualize” pain as a score from 0 to 100 for both sender and receiver. The actuator is then calibrated based on each person's sensitivity, so the sensation conveyed to both people will be the same.

In this initial version, the platform works with thermally induced painful stimuli. “This method allows for fine tuning and ensures safety during research and development,” says Docomo. PaMeLa also used thermal stimulation in its pain intensity study, in which pain stimulation data was assessed in 461 people with machine learning algorithms.

However, pain from other sources can also be shared, the company says. Ultimately, Docomo aims to convey many types of physical and even psychological pain, which will be the goal of future research. “We think there are different possibilities for how pain can be captured and shared,” says Docomo.

Finding Use Cases for General Pain Perception

The technology is still at a very early stage, he said. Carl Saabfounder and director Cleveland Clinical Pain Management Consortium. Saab, who is also an adjunct professor Brown Universityexplores pain biomarkers, including using EEG measurements and artificial intelligence.

First, Saab says he's not entirely clear what the use case for this platform is. From a scientific point of view, h.He also notes that pain differs between healthy patients and those who experience persistent pain, such as: chronic pain or migraine. “If you induce pain in a healthy volunteer versus someone who is in pain, the nature of pain representation in the brain will be different,” Saab says. Healthy volunteers know that the pain will be temporary, he explains. But in real patients chronic pain often accompanied by anxiety, depression and sometimes side effects from medications.

For example, in a study conducted by Saab several years ago, he induced pain by immersing volunteers' hands in ice for an extended period. When he did the same thing with pain patients, the resulting brain activity was much more complex and the signals were not as clear.

Docomo says it plans to collaborate with hospitals in the future to test the technology in healthcare settings. And in March PaMeLa announced completion a clinical study that analyzed changes in EEG signals before and after taking pain medications in patients undergoing surgery in a general setting anesthesia. The startup is also researching pain in other conditions such as exercise, acute injection pain and chronic pain.

“Pain is a multidimensional experience,” says Saab. “When you say you're measuring someone's pain, you always have to be careful what dimension you're measuring.”