Transcranial double-pulse stimulation of the contralateral primary somatosensory cortex can facilitate laser-evoked pain

Introduction: Pain processing involves various cortical struc-ures. Current concepts propose that the primary somatosensory cortex (S1) is one of the areas implicated in the encoding of sensory-discriminative aspects of pain perception. Objective: To study the acute impact of double-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (dp-TMS) of the contralateral S1 on pain perception in healthy human volunteers. Methods: Twelve healthy male subjects participated in this study (aged 23 to 27 years). In a first session, we recorded laser-evoked potentials (LEPs) to determine the individual latency of the pain-related cortica…