FUNCTIONAL IMAGING OF PAIN - NEW INSIGHTS REGARDING THE ROLE OF THE CEREBRAL-CORTEX IN HUMAN PAIN PERCEPTION

There has been a large increase in the use of brain imaging technologi es to study pain. Most likely this trend will accelerate even more in the near future. Comparing among the studies that have examined the br ain physiology of human pain perception the general impression is conf using. It seems that depending on the laboratory, the specifics of the technology used and the details of stimulus delivery, different resul ts are obtained regarding the brain sites and their type of involvemen t (increased or decreased activity) in pain perception. This review is an attempt to allay some of this confusion by proposing a set of hypo theses that can explain most of the differences more coherently. The m ain conclusion of this review is rather surprising, because the argume nts lead to the notion that the spinothalamic pathway may not be the m ajor system involved in clinically relevant pain states.