The subjective experience of pain: where expectations become reality.

ABSTRACT: Our subjective sensory experiences are thought to be heavily shaped by interactions between expectations and incoming sensory information. However, the neural mechanisms supporting these interactions remain poorly understood. By using combined psychophysical and functional MRI techniques, brain activation related to the intensity of expected pain and experienced pain was characterized. As the magnitude of expected pain increased, activation increased in the thalamus, insula, prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and other brain regions. Pain-intensity-related brain activation was identified in a widely distributed set of brain regions but overlapped partially with expectation-related activation in regions, including the anterior insula and ACC. When expected pain was manipulat

SUBMITTER: Koyama T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1200254 | biostudies-literature | 2005 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature