The cortical representation of pain.

Anatomical and physiological studies in animals, as well as functional imaging studies in humans have shown that multiple cortical areas are activated by painful stimuli. The view that pain is perceived only as a result of thalamic processing has, therefore, been abandoned, and has been replaced by the question of what functions can be assigned to individual cortical areas. The following cortical areas have been shown to be involved in the processing of painful stimuli: primary somatosensory cortex, secondary somatosensory cortex and its vicinity in the parietal operculum, insula, anterior cingulate cortex and prefrontal cortex. These areas probably process different aspects of pain in para…