Abstract
Burst stimulation was developed based on a very simple principle that mimicking naturally occurring firing patterns might be beneficial for neuromodulation. Its main benefit lies in the capacity of burst stimulation to modulate the salience (behavioral relevance) of any stimulus, which is clinically expressed as (un)pleasantness or suffering and physiologically by the medial pain pathway. Behaviorally relevant stimuli focus the attention paid to the stimulus. Burst stimulation, in contrast to tonic stimulation, modulates not only the painfulness/loudness of a pain/sound stimulus and the descending inhibitory pain/sound system but also the suffering attached to it. Furthermore, it is capable of inducing pain suppression without the mandatory presence of paresthesia.