Summary: 1
J Neurophysiology
Parsing pain perception between nociceptive
representation and magnitude estimation
M.N. Baliki1
, P.Y. Geha1
, A.V. Apkarian1, 2, 3
1
Department of Physiology, 2
Department of Anesthesia, 3
Department of Surgery,
Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago IL 60611
Correspondence should be addressed to A. Vania Apkarian (a-apkarian@northwestern.edu)
Abstract
Assessing the size of objects rapidly and accurately clearly has survival value. A central
multi-sensory module for subjective magnitude assessment is therefore highly likely,
suggested by psychophysical studies, and proposed on theoretical grounds. Given that
pain perception is fundamentally an assessment of stimulus intensity, it must necessarily
engage such a central module. Accordingly, we compared fMRI activity of pain
magnitude ratings to matched visual magnitude ratings in 14 subjects. We show that brain

Source: Apkarian, A. Vania - Department of Physiology, Northwestern University

Collections: Biology and Medicine