Bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA)‐derived phase angle (PhA) has been used to assess cellular health in various populations, but its usefulness as a tool for measuring muscular performance in adult athletes has not been extensively investigated. Our investigation examined the association of whole‐body (WB) PhA with muscular performance in 117 adult athletes from different sports and additionally assessed whether regional PhA was a better indicator of muscular performance compared to WB, while accounting for lean soft tissue (LST). Muscular performance was assessed with handgrip strength and countermovement jump power. WB and regional PhA and LST were obtained by BIA and dual‐energy x‐ray absorptiometry, respectively. Multiple linear regression was used to model outcomes, while adjusting for LST. WB PhA was positively associated with relative power and relative and absolute strength (p < 0.05), irrespective of LST. Regional PhA measures explained similar amounts of variance in absolute and relative power and strength as that of WB PhA after accounting for age, sex, height, and sport type (lower limb adj R ² = 0.42, 0.60 for power; upper limb adj R ² = 0.38, 0.74 for strength; WB adj R ² = 0.44, 0.63 and 0.38, 0.75 for power and strength, respectively). Only upper limb PhA was related with strength (p < 0.05) after accounting for upper limb LST. PhA may have the potential to be used as a marker of functional muscle mass, which is important when it comes to assessing muscular performance of athletes. Regional measures of PhA do not provide a better indicator of regional strength or power when compared to WB PhA.

A promising stream of investigations is targeting ongoing neural oscillations and whether their modulation could be related to the perception of pain. Using an electroencephalography (EEG) frequency-tagging approach, sustained periodic thermonociceptive stimuli perceived as painful have been shown to modulate ongoing oscillations in the theta, alpha and beta bands at the frequency of stimulation. Nonetheless, it remains uncertain whether these modulations are indeed linked to pain perception. To test this relationship, we modulated pain perception using a cue-based expectation modulation paradigm and investigated whether ongoing oscillations in different frequency bands mirror the changes in stimulus perception. Forty healthy participants were instructed that a visual cue can precede either a high- or low-intensity stimulation. These cues were paired with three different levels of sustained periodic thermonociceptive stimuli (low, medium and high). Despite a strong effect of expectation on perceived stimulus intensity, this effect was not reflected in the modulation of the ongoing oscillations, suggesting a potential dissociation of pain perception and these oscillatory activities. Rather, it seems that the intensity of stimulation is the primary generator of the frequency-tagged EEG responses. Importantly, these results need to be confirmed by further investigations that could allow the detection of smaller effects than originally estimated.

Health anxiety is often linked to lower pain thresholds and heightened sensitivity to health-related stimuli, yet the relationship between these psychological and physiological traits remains complex. In this study, we relied on the use of the brain’s ability to discriminate fast and periodically presented stimuli (i.e. oddballs) of a given image category within a stream of unrelated images, to investigate whether neural responses to health-related visual stimuli are associated with individual differences in pain sensitivity and psychological traits such as anxiety and depression. We hypothesized that, if the periodically presented health-related oddball elicits a periodic neural response, this image category might lead to a stronger response in individuals with health anxiety and psychological malaise. This is the first evidence that periodically presented health-related images elicit a neural response which can be clearly differentiated from unrelated images. Additionally, this response shared a relationship with depression, which was in turn moderated by the pain threshold. While these results offer insight into the interaction between psychological traits, pain threshold and the processing of health-related images, future studies will have to confirm the specificity of the obtained relationships.

Sustained periodic stimuli are known to elicit a periodic neural response (i.e. steady-state evoked potential) in the EEG frequency spectrum. These responses can easily be traced at their frequency of stimulation and corresponding harmonics using a frequency-tagging approach. To date, sustained periodic thermonociceptive stimuli have only been used on one extremity (e.g. right volar forearm) at a time. Extending this paradigm to a bilateral application would enable its use to study the sensory integration of concomitant nociceptive stimuli and cognitive modulations during e.g. spatial attention tasks. This study demonstrates that slow sustained sinusoidal thermonociceptive stimuli, bilaterally applied using two different frequencies (i.e. f ₁ , f ₂ , one on each forearm), elicit two distinct neural periodic responses at the respective frequency of stimulation and their harmonics. Additionally, we showed preliminary evidence for an interaction between the neural populations involved in the response to these stimuli, marked by neural activity at intermodulation frequencies (n* f ₁ ± m* f ₂ ). So far, this non-linear integration of sensory information has already been observed following visual and auditory stimuli, but not yet following thermonociceptive stimuli.