Specificity of the cortical representation of pain

old_uid10298
titleSpecificity of the cortical representation of pain
start_date2011/10/21
schedule14h30-16h30
onlineno
summaryA network of brain areas is often assumed to be preferentially involved in processing nociceptive input and represent a unique cerebral signature for pain perception. As such, it has been christened the “pain matrix”. However, in contrast with this dominant view, I will show that the so-called pain matrix can be entirely explained by a combination of multimodal neural activities (i.e. activities also elicited by stimuli belonging to other sensory modalities) and somatosensory-specific neural activities (i.e. activities elicited by both nociceptive and tactile somatosensory stimuli). By showing that pain-evoked brain responses are not specific for the perception of pain, these results question the appropriateness of relying on them to build models of where and how nociceptive input is processed in the human brain.   References - GD Iannetti, MC Lee, NP Hughes, A Mouraux. The determinants of laser-evoked EEG responses: pain perception or stimulus saliency? Journal of Neurophysiology 2008, 100: 815-828. - GD Iannetti, A Mouraux. From the neuromatrix to the pain matrix (and back). Review. Exp Brain Res 2010, 205: 1-12. - A Mouraux, GD Iannetti. Nociceptive laser-evoked brain potentials do not reflect nociceptive-specific neural activity. Journal of Neurophysiology, 2009, 101:3258-69. - MC Lee, A Mouraux, GD Iannetti. Characterizing the cortical activity through which pain emerges from nociception. Journal of Neuroscience 2009, 29: 7909-16.
responsiblesde Vignemont