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Pain perception and its genesis in the human brain

Andrew CN CHEN^*

Center for Higher Brain Functions, Capital Medical University, Beijing 100069, China

Abstract

In the past two decades, pain perception in the human brain has been studied with EEG/MEG brain topography and PET/fMRI neuroimaging techniques. A host of cortical and subcortical loci can be activated by various nociceptive conditions. The activationin pain perception can be induced by physical (electrical, thermal, mechanical), chemical (capsacin, ascoric acid), psychological(anxiety, stress, nocebo) means, and pathological (e.g. migraine, neuropathic) diseases. This article deals mainly on the activation, butnot modulation, of human pain in the brain. The brain areas identified are named pain representation, matrix, neuraxis, or signature. Thesites are not uniformly isolated across various studies, but largely include a set of cores sites: thalamus and primary somatic area (SI),second somatic area (SII), insular cortex (IC), prefrontal cortex (PFC), cingulate, and parietal cortices. Other areas less reported andconsidered important in pain perception include brainstem, hippocampus, amygdala and supplementary motor area (SMA). The issuesof pain perception basically encompass both the site and the mode of brain function. Although the site issue is delineared to a largedegree, the mode issue has been much less explored. From the temporal dynamics, IC can be considered as the initial stage in genesis ofpain perception as conscious suffering, the unique aversion in the human brain.

Key words: human pain perception; brain measures; nociceptive pain; pathological pain; anatomy-physiology; genesis

Received: 　　Accepted:

Corresponding author: Andrew CN CHEN　　E-mail: ac@ccmu.edu.cn

Citing This Article：

Andrew CN CHEN. Pain perception and its genesis in the human brain. Acta Physiol Sin 2008; 60 (5): 677-685 (in Chinese with English abstract).