Pain evoked potentials (EPs) have been used in the last two decades as
means of obtaining objective measures of pain, in clinical and experi
mental setups. The possibility that the pain EP wave contains elements
of the endogenous P300 potential rather than being a neurophysiologic
al correlate of pain has been raised by a number of authors, but the i
ssue has not been resolved, In this study, two experiments were perfor
med to study the effect of non-modality-specific factors on the laser
EP: (1) a stimulus attend as opposed to a stimulus-ignore condition an
d (2) counterbalanced oddball and task P300 stimulus presentations. Th
e latter was to permit full examination of the separate and combined i
nfluences of each condition on the EP. Stimuli were given to the radia
l hand of 10 healthy volunteers using a CO2 laser. The positive compon
ent of the laser EP was affected by both manipulations relating to (1)
attention (P = 0.0146) and (2) the frequency condition (P = 0.003) in
the P300 paradigm. The task condition in the second paradigm did not
affect the positive wave on its own, although its effect was visible i
n interaction with frequency (P = 0.033), In conclusion, although the
presence of a somatic component in the laser EP cannot be ruled out, w
e suggest that the laser EP contains a definite non-modality-specific
P300 component, and is not a pure neurophysiological correlate of pain
intensity.