Pain-Specific Brain Activity Is Subtle, and Scattered | Pain Research Forum

Researchers using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to define neural signatures of pain in the brain face a daunting task, because pain elicits complex and distributed activity in many of the same brain regions as other intense sensations. Now, Giandomenico Iannetti, University College London, UK, and colleagues have identified fine-grained differences in brain activity, scattered across multiple primary sensory regions, that distinguish pain compared to the response to other strong sensory stimuli such as loud noise and bright light. "There is something specific" in brain activity during pain compared to other sensations, said Iannetti. "But that something is very, very tiny." Iannetti's group found the pain-specific patterns in some unlikely places: Even the visual and auditory cortices—regions thought to be dedicated to sight and hearing, respectively—showed pain signatures. That means that processing of pain and other sensory input may be much more widely distributed than previously appreciated. "It's not just the commonly thought brain areas that are representing the senses," said first author Meng Liang. The results support the idea that, in the quest to understand the brain in pain, researchers cannot confine themselves to looking at bulk changes in brain activity in broad areas typically associated with pain, but will need to look for more discrete, spatially defined signals all over the brain. The study appe...
Source: Psychology of Pain - Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs