Feedback within the oculomotor system improves visual processing at eye movement end points, also termed a visual grasp. We do not just view the world around us however, we also reach out and grab things with our hands. A growing body of literature suggests that visual processing in near-hand space is altered. The control systems for moving either the eyes or the hands rely on parallel networks of fronto-parietal regions, which have feedback connections to visual areas. Since the oculomotor system effects on visual processing occur through feedback, both through the motor plan and the motor efference copy, a parallel system where reaching and/or grasping motor-related activity also affects visual processing is likely. Areas in the posterior parietal cortex, for example, receive proprioceptive and visual information used to guide actions, as well as motor efference signals. This trio of information channels is all that would be necessary to produce spatial allocation of reach-related visual attention. We review evidence from behavioral and neurophysiological studies that support the hypothesis that feedback from the reaching and/or grasping motor control networks affects visual processing while noting ways in which it differs from that seen within the oculomotor system. We also suggest that object affordances may represent the neural mechanism through which certain object features are selected for preferential processing when stimuli are near the hand. Finally, we summarize the two effector-based feedback systems and discuss how having separate but parallel effector systems allows for efficient decoupling of eye and hand movements.

An effective physiological pain assessment method that complements the gold standard of self-report is highly desired in pain clinical research and practice. Recent studies have shown that pain-evoked electroencephalography (EEG) responses could be used as a readout of perceived pain intensity. Existing EEG-based pain assessment is normally achieved by cross-individual prediction (i.e., to train a prediction model from a group of individuals and to apply the model on a new individual), so its performance is seriously hampered by the substantial inter-individual variability in pain-evoked EEG responses. In this study, to reduce the inter-individual variability in pain-evoked EEG and to improve the accuracy of cross-individual pain prediction, we examined the relationship between pain-evoked EEG, spontaneous EEG, and pain perception on a pain EEG dataset, where a large number of laser pulses (>100) with a wide energy range were delivered. Motivated by our finding that an individual's pain-evoked EEG responses is significantly correlated with his/her spontaneous EEG in terms of magnitude, we proposed a normalization method for pain-evoked EEG responses using one's spontaneous EEG to reduce the inter-individual variability. In addition, a nonlinear relationship between the level of pain perception and pain-evoked EEG responses was obtained, which inspired us to further develop a new two-stage pain prediction strategy, a binary classification of low-pain and high-pain trials followed by a continuous prediction for high-pain trials only, both of which used spontaneous-EEG-normalized magnitudes of evoked EEG responses as features. Results show that the proposed normalization strategy can effectively reduce the inter-individual variability in pain-evoked responses, and the two-stage pain prediction method can lead to a higher prediction accuracy.

Alongside the time-locked event-related potentials (ERPs), nociceptive somatosensory inputs can induce modulations of ongoing oscillations, appeared as event-related synchronization or desynchronization (ERS/ERD) in different frequency bands. These ERD/ERS activities are suggested to reflect various aspects of pain perception, including the representation, encoding, assessment, and integration of the nociceptive sensory inputs, as well as behavioral responses to pain, even the precise details of their roles remain unclear. Previous studies investigating the functional relevance of ERD/ERS activities in pain perception were normally done by assessing their latencies, frequencies, magnitudes, and scalp distributions, which would be then correlated with subjective pain perception or stimulus intensity. Nevertheless, these temporal, spectral, and spatial profiles of stimulus induced ERD/ERS could only partly reveal the dynamics of brain oscillatory activities. Indeed, additional parameters, including but not limited to, phase, neural generator, and cross frequency couplings, should be paid attention to comprehensively and systemically evaluate the dynamics of oscillatory activities associated with pain perception and behavior. This would be crucial in exploring the psychophysiological mechanisms of neural oscillation, and in understanding the neural functions of cortical oscillations involved in pain perception and behavior. Notably, some chronic pain (e.g., neurogenic pain and complex regional pain syndrome) patients are often associated with the occurrence of abnormal synchronized oscillatory brain activities, and selectively modulating cortical oscillatory activities has been showed to be a potential therapy strategy to relieve pain with the application of neurostimulation techniques, e.g., repeated transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) and transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS). Thus, the investigation of the oscillatory activities proceeding from phenomenology to function, opens new perspectives to address questions in human pain psychophysiology and pathophysiology, thereby promoting the establishment of rational therapeutic strategy.