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Research progress on the mechanism of pain related neural pathways above the spinal cord

CHEN Dong-Yang, HAN Qing-Rong, SHENG Hai-Yan^*

School of Basic Medical Sciences, Xinxiang Medical University, Xinxiang 453003, China

Abstract

Pain is a multi-dimensional emotional experience, and pain sensation and pain emotion are the two main components. As for pain, previous studies only focused on a certain link of the pain transmission pathway or a certain key brain region, and there is a lack of evidence that connectivity of brain regions is involved in pain or pain regulation in the overall state. The establishment of new experimental tools and techniques has brought light to the study of neural pathways of pain sensation and pain emotion. In this paper, the structure and functional basis of the neural pathways involved in the formation of pain sensation and the regulation of pain emotion in the nervous system above the spinal cord level, including thalamus, amygdala, midbrain periaqueductal gray (PAG), parabrachial nucleus (PB) and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), are reviewed in recent years, providing clues for the in-depth study of pain.

Key words: neural pathway; pain sensation; pain emotion; behavior

Received: 　　Accepted:

Corresponding author: 盛海燕　　E-mail: shenghy2011@126.com

Citing This Article：

CHEN Dong-Yang, HAN Qing-Rong, SHENG Hai-Yan. Research progress on the mechanism of pain related neural pathways above the spinal cord. Acta Physiol Sin 2023; 75 (3): 475-485 (in Chinese with English abstract).