Pain is an under-reported but prevalent symptom in Parkinson’s Disease (PD), impacting patients’ quality of life. Both pain and PD conditions cause cortical excitability reduction and non-invasive brain stimulation. Mental representation techniques are thought to be able to counteract it, also resulting effectively in chronic pain conditions. We aim to conduct two independent studies in order to evaluate the efficacy of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and mental representation protocol in the management of pain in PD patients during the ON state: (1) tDCS over the Primary Motor Cortex (M1); and (2) Action Observation (AO) and Motor Imagery (MI) training through a Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) using Virtual Reality (AO + MI-BCI). Both studies will include 32 subjects in a longitudinal prospective parallel randomized controlled trial design under different blinding conditions. The main outcomes will be score changes in King’s Parkinson’s Disease Pain Scale, Brief Pain Inventory, Temporal Summation, Conditioned Pain Modulation, and Pain Pressure Threshold. Assessment will be performed pre-intervention, post-intervention, and 15 days post-intervention, in both ON and OFF states.

中文翻译：

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针对帕金森氏病患者的针对疼痛的非侵入性脑刺激和心理表征技术的新方法：两项随机对照试验的两种研究方案

疼痛是帕金森氏病（PD）中少有报道但普遍存在的症状，影响患者的生活质量。疼痛和PD条件都会导致皮质兴奋性降低和非侵入性脑刺激。人们认为心理表征技术能够抵消它，也有效地导致了慢性疼痛。我们旨在进行两项独立的研究，以评估经颅直流电刺激（tDCS）和心理表征方案在ON状态期间PD患者疼痛管理中的功效：（1）初级运动皮层（M1）上的tDCS ; （2）使用虚拟现实（AO + MI-BCI）通过脑机接口（BCI）进行动作观察（AO）和运动图像（MI）训练。两项研究均将在不同致盲条件下，采用纵向前瞻性平行随机对照试验设计，纳入32名受试者。主要结果将是帕金森氏病疼痛量表，短暂疼痛量表，时间总和，条件性疼痛调节和疼痛压力阈值的得分变化。评估将在干预前，干预后和干预后15天以ON和OFF状态进行。