RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Intrinsic Network Activity Reflects the Fluctuating Experience of Tonic Pain JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 2021.06.30.450591 DO 10.1101/2021.06.30.450591 A1 Bettina Deak A1 Thomas Eggert A1 Astrid Mayr A1 Anne Stankewitz A1 Filipp Filippopulos A1 Pauline Jahn A1 Viktor Witkovsky A1 Andreas Straube A1 Enrico Schulz YR 2021 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/07/07/2021.06.30.450591.abstract AB Although we know sensation is continuous, research on long-lasting and continuously changing stimuli is scarce and the dynamic nature of ongoing cortical processing is largely neglected.In a longitudinal study with 152 fMRI sessions, participants were asked to continuously rate the intensity of applied tonic heat pain for 20 minutes. Using group independent component analysis and dual-regression, we extracted the subjects’ time courses of intrinsic network activity. The relationship between the dynamic fluctuation of network activity with the varying time courses of three pain processing entities was computed: pain intensity, the direction of pain intensity changes and temperature.We were able to dissociate the spatio-temporal patterns of objective (temperature) and subjective (pain intensity/changes of pain intensity) aspects of pain processing in the human brain. We found two somatosensory networks with distinct functions: one network which encodes the small fluctuations in temperature and consists mainly of bilateral SI. A second right-lateralised network that encodes the intensity of the subjective experience of pain consists of SI, SII, the PCC, and the thalamus.We revealed the somatosensory dynamics that build up towards a current subjective percept of pain. The timing suggests a cascade of subsequent processing steps towards the current pain percept.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.