Measurement and evaluation of neural activity in acute tonic cold pain under intense microwave radiation

Abstract

To explore the influence of high-frequency microwave transmission on the power change of EEG in pain-induced brain activity. we propose a method, to measure and evaluate the relative changes in the Electroencephalographic (EEG) power for microwave frequencies 4.5, 5, and 5.5 GHz in no pain (NP) and cold pain (CP) conditions. The relative power changes of EEG frequency bands in delta, theta, alpha1, alpha2, beta1, and beta2 were calculated with and without (Sham) microwave transmission. Then, the standardized low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography (sLORETA) was used to analyze the source localization of different pain types. In addition, a pain brain activity detection experiment was designed to verify the feasibility and accuracy of microwave detection of pain. At 5 GHz microwave transmission, the average EEG power of delta, beta1, and beta2 increased by 10–35%, which was substantially higher than that of Sham. In source localization analysis, the source activity changes of the activated brain regions were enhanced under high frequency microwave radiation. The proposed method can better reflect the variation of active state EEG power under high-frequency electromagnetic radiation. In the test of pain detection, microwave transcranial (MT) signal has certain correlation with the spectrum characteristics of EEG signal in the same test state, and the experimental results confirm that MT signal is indeed related to pain brain activity. This study provides a basis for microwave detection of neural activity induced by cold pain and has great significance for clinical diagnosis of pain-induced diseases.