Networks configurations of pain: an efficiency characterization of information transmission

ROMINA DE LUISE; ROMAN BARAVALLE; OSVALDO A. ROSSO; FERNANDO MONTANI

EUROPEAN PHYSICAL JOURNAL B - CONDENSED MATTER

SPRINGER

Año: 2021 vol. 94 p. 34 - 47

1434-6028

Recent studies have shown that gamma band oscillations are directly related to pain intensity. Pain can be exacerbated or diminished via deactivation or activation of inhibitory interneurons in the dorsal horn. We consider a biologically plausible network model with different proportion of inhibitory neurons to emulate gamma elicited activity during pain processes. We perform an analysis using graph theory in order to gain further insight in the functional state of the circuitry underlying nociceptive process, considering all the possible gamma elicited configurations of pain when changing the number of inhibitory neurons. The probability distribution of the signal associated to each node or neuron are estimated through the Bandt and Pompe approach. We evaluate the Jensen-Shannon distance between all the possible pairs of nodes/neurons, characterizing the different network configurations by calculating the closeness centrality. Thus, by building the graph properties through the node strength distributions and using an information theoretical approach, we characterize the dynamics of the network configurations of pain. This allows us to identify the nonlinear dynamical structure underlying the nociceptive process. Importantly, our findings show that a network configuration with a $20%$ of inhibitory neurons boost information transmission of the complex network circuitry associated to the pain processing.