Search research articles

ABOUT JoVE

Overview Leadership Blog JoVE Help Center

AUTHORS

Publishing Process Editorial Board Scope & Policies Peer Review FAQ Submit

LIBRARIANS

Testimonials Subscriptions Access Resources Library Advisory Board FAQ

RESEARCH

JoVE Journal Methods Collections JoVE Encyclopedia of Experiments Archive

EDUCATION

JoVE Core JoVE Business JoVE Science Education JoVE Lab Manual Faculty Resource Center Faculty Site

Terms & Conditions of Use

Related Concept Videos

Nociception

Nociception

Nociception—the ability to feel pain—is essential for an organism’s survival and overall well-being. Noxious stimuli such as piercing pain from a sharp object, heat from an open flame, or contact with corrosive chemicals are first detected by sensory receptors, called nociceptors, located on nerve endings. Nociceptors express ion channels that convert noxious stimuli into electrical signals. When these signals reach the brain via sensory neurons, they are perceived as pain.

Neural Circuits

Neural Circuits

Neural circuits and neuronal pools are two of the main structures found in the nervous system. Neural circuits are networks of neurons that work together to carry out a specific task or process. They consist of interconnected neurons and glial cells, which provide structural and metabolic support.
Neuronal pools are collections of nerve cells with similar functions and interact through chemical and electrical signals. These pools include both interneurons (the central neural circuit nodes that...

Pain

Pain

Pain serves as a critical warning signal that alerts the body to potential or actual harm. When mechanical pressure on the skin is intense, such as from a sharp pinch, the sensation transitions from touch to pain. Similarly, extreme temperatures, like a hot pot handle, convert the sensation of heat into pain. Pain can also result from overstimulation of other senses, such as blinding light, loud noise, or the intense heat from habañero peppers. This ability to sense pain is essential for...

Hierarchy of Motor Control

Hierarchy of Motor Control

The hierarchy of motor control refers to the different levels of organization and processing involved in controlling movement in the body. These levels range from higher cortical areas involved in planning and decision-making to lower spinal cord reflexes that respond automatically to external stimuli.

Overview of Somatic Sensory Pathways

Overview of Somatic Sensory Pathways

Somatic sensory or somatosensory pathways refer to the neural pathways that carry information related to touch, pressure, pain, temperature, and proprioception from the skin, muscles, tendons, and joints to the brain. These pathways involve several stages of processing and integration of sensory information.
The somatosensory system is divided into three main pathways: the dorsal (or posterior) column-medial lemniscus, spinothalamic (or anterolateral), and spinocerebellar pathways.
The dorsal...

Somatosensation

Somatosensation

The somatosensory system relays sensory information from the skin, mucous membranes, limbs, and joints. Somatosensation is more familiarly known as the sense of touch. A typical somatosensory pathway includes three types of long neurons: primary, secondary, and tertiary. Primary neurons have cell bodies located near the spinal cord in groups of neurons called dorsal root ganglia. The sensory neurons of ganglia innervate designated areas of skin called dermatomes.

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by

Same author

Subspace communication in the hippocampal-retrosplenial axis.

Nature·2026

Same author

Hierarchical Gating of Cortical Population Dynamics Drives Pain.

bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology·2026

Same author

A cautionary tale for AI and machine learning in psychiatry.

Translational psychiatry·2026

Same author

A Holistic and Dynamic Network-Level View of the Autonomic Nervous System.

Annual review of biomedical engineering·2025

Same author

Emerging Brain-to-Content Technologies from Generative AI and Deep Representation Learning.

IEEE signal processing magazine·2025

Same author

Harnessing electroencephalography connectomes for cognitive and clinical neuroscience.

Nature biomedical engineering·2025

Same journal

Fleeing is believing: adaptive behavior under social threat as an inference process.

Frontiers in neural circuits·2026

Same journal

A modular and flexible pipeline for intraoperative electrode reconstruction and localization in patients with brain lesions.

Frontiers in neural circuits·2026

Same journal

Functional implications of atypical action potential generation in the (patho)physiological brain: from developmental program to glioma.

Frontiers in neural circuits·2026

Same journal

Loss of function of Noggin inhibits glial scar formation and motor function recovery after spinal cord injury.

Frontiers in neural circuits·2026

Same journal

Cross domain consistency of aesthetic preference-driven social behavior.

Frontiers in neural circuits·2026

Same journal

Beyond synaptic plasticity: a summary of a linear model of the cerebellar locomotor computation.

Frontiers in neural circuits·2026

See all related articles

Search research articles

Related Experiment Video

Updated: Aug 6, 2025

Recording Network Activity in Spinal Nociceptive Circuits Using Microelectrode Arrays

Recording Network Activity in Spinal Nociceptive Circuits Using Microelectrode Arrays

Published on: February 9, 2022

Hierarchical predictive coding in distributed pain circuits.

Zhe Sage Chen^1,2,3,4,5

¹Department of Psychiatry, New York University Grossman School of Medicine, New York, NY, United States.

Frontiers in Neural Circuits

|March 20, 2023

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

This review proposes a hierarchical predictive coding framework for brain pain perception, suggesting active inference and neural oscillations integrate sensory information across distributed pain circuits.

Keywords:

active inference cingulate-insula hub hierarchical predictive coding neural oscillations neurotransmitter pain network prediction error traveling waves

More Related Videos

Psychophysically-anchored, Robust Thresholding in Studying Pain-related Lateralization of Oscillatory Prestimulus Activity

Psychophysically-anchored, Robust Thresholding in Studying Pain-related Lateralization of Oscillatory Prestimulus Activity

Published on: January 21, 2017

An Experimental Paradigm for the Prediction of Post-Operative Pain PPOP

An Experimental Paradigm for the Prediction of Post-Operative Pain PPOP

Published on: January 27, 2010

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Aug 6, 2025

Recording Network Activity in Spinal Nociceptive Circuits Using Microelectrode Arrays

Recording Network Activity in Spinal Nociceptive Circuits Using Microelectrode Arrays

Published on: February 9, 2022

Psychophysically-anchored, Robust Thresholding in Studying Pain-related Lateralization of Oscillatory Prestimulus Activity

Psychophysically-anchored, Robust Thresholding in Studying Pain-related Lateralization of Oscillatory Prestimulus Activity

Published on: January 21, 2017

An Experimental Paradigm for the Prediction of Post-Operative Pain PPOP

An Experimental Paradigm for the Prediction of Post-Operative Pain PPOP

Published on: January 27, 2010

Area of Science:

Computational neuroscience
Neuroscience of pain perception

Background:

Predictive coding explains brain perception and action, widely used in sensory and motor control.
Pain processing involves distributed neural circuits, but network coordination remains unclear.
The cingulate-insula network is a key hub for sensory and spinothalamic inputs in pain.

Purpose of the Study:

To propose an updated hierarchical predictive coding framework for pain perception.
To discuss computational, algorithmic, and implementation aspects of this framework.
To suggest mechanisms for integrating pain information across distributed brain circuits.

Main Methods:

Review of existing evidence from human and animal studies on pain processing.
Theoretical proposal of a hierarchical predictive coding framework.
Discussion of active inference as a generalized predictive coding algorithm.

Main Results:

The proposed framework integrates bottom-up and top-down information processing in pain.
Active inference is suggested as a unified algorithm for predictive coding in pain.
Hierarchically organized traveling waves of neural oscillations are proposed as a mechanism.

Conclusions:

A hierarchical predictive coding framework offers a new perspective on brain pain perception.
Active inference and neural oscillations provide plausible mechanisms for network-wide pain information integration.
This framework advances our understanding of the computational principles underlying pain processing.