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Related Experiment Videos

Pain intensity processing within the human brain: a bilateral, distributed mechanism.

R C Coghill1, C N Sang, J M Maisog

  • 1Pain and Neurosensory Mechanisms Branch, National Institutes of Dental Research, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892, USA.

Journal of Neurophysiology
|October 9, 1999
PubMed
Summary

Brain imaging reveals that pain intensity processing involves a widespread network of brain regions, not just the somatosensory cortex. This distributed system helps maintain pain awareness even after brain damage.

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Pain Research
  • Functional Brain Imaging

Background:

  • Previous functional imaging studies identified diverse brain areas involved in pain processing.
  • These areas are interconnected and involved in multiple functions, but studied in isolation.
  • The global organization of brain mechanisms for pain processing remains under-explored.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To characterize the multiregional organization of supraspinal pain processing.
  • To identify the specific brain mechanisms involved in processing pain intensity.
  • To investigate the functional organization of pain intensity perception.

Main Methods:

  • Combined positron emission tomography (PET) with psychophysical assessment.
  • Used graded painful stimuli to evaluate pain intensity perception.

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  • Employed multiple regression analysis to correlate brain activation with perceived intensity.

    • Main Results:

    • Identified statistically reliable relationships between perceived pain intensity and activation in diverse brain regions.
    • Pain intensity-related activation was observed bilaterally in the cerebellum, putamen, thalamus, insula, anterior cingulate cortex, and secondary somatosensory cortex.
    • Activation also occurred contralaterally in the primary somatosensory cortex and supplementary motor area, and ipsilaterally in the ventral premotor area.

    Conclusions:

    • Confirmed a highly distributed, bilateral supraspinal mechanism for processing pain intensity.
    • This distributed processing contrasts with traditional views confining sensory-discriminative pain processing to the somatosensory cortex.
    • The conservation of pain intensity information across multiple brain areas may explain preserved pain awareness after cerebral cortical lesions.