Higher Centre Activation in Pain
Cards (3)
- Higher Centre Activation in Pain pt1:
- from the dorsal horn, nociceptive information decussates to the contralateral side of the spinal cord, where its relayed to higher centres in the midbrain and brain via the ascending tracts - one of the main tracts being the lateral spinothalamic tract
- Higher Centre Activation in Pain pt2:
- there is not a specific area of the brain that deals with the nociceptive information
- PET scans and fMRI imaging reveals a distributed system of areas in the brain dealing with nociceptive information
- there is involvement of:
- anterior cingulate cortex
- thalamus
- insular cortex
- post parietal cortex
- premotor cortex
- frontal cortex
- prefrontal cortex
- cerebellum
- basal ganglia
- Higher Centre Activation in Pain pt3:
- there is a distributed system of areas in the brain dealing with nociceptive information because, at a subconscious level, the brain has to deal with the:
- sensory discriminative aspects - where is the pain, whats its quality, how intense
- attention & salience - draw attention to or away from the pain, depending on how salient/important it is to the organisms survival
- affective/cognitive - how this makes us feel and what does it mean
- motor/behavioural - what should I do