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Democratic organization of the thalamocortical neural ensembles in nociceptivesignal processing

LUO Fei^*, WANG Jin-Yan

Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China

Abstract

Acute pain is a warning protective sensation for any impending harm. However, chronic pain syndromes are often resistantdiseases that may consume large amount of health care costs. It has been suggested by recent studies that pain perception may beformed in central neural networks via large-scale coding processes, which involves sensory, affective, and cognitive dimensions. Manycentral areas are involved in these processes, including structures from the spinal cord, the brain stem, the limbic system, to the cortices.Thus, chronic painful diseases may be the result of some abnormal coding within this network. A thorough investigation of codingmechanism of pain within the central neuromatrix will bring us great insight into the mechanisms responsible for the development ofchronic pain, hence leading to novel therapeutic interventions for pain management.

Key words: pain; perception; emotion; central coding; neuromatrix

Received: 　　Accepted:

Corresponding author: LUO Fei　　E-mail: luof@psych.ac.cn

Citing This Article：

LUO Fei, WANG Jin-Yan. Democratic organization of the thalamocortical neural ensembles in nociceptivesignal processing. Acta Physiol Sin 2008; 60 (5): 669-676 (in Chinese with English abstract).