Pain and brain regions

Summary

  • Certain brain areas involved in physical pain are also activated during emotional pain. Therefore, there is a clear overlap.

  • Our brain itself cannot feel pain. However, structures such as the meninges, blood vessels, muscles, and nerves in your neck, face, and scalp can register pain.

  • There are specific areas in the brain that become active when experiencing pain.

  • Some parts of the brain act as a natural painkiller and can reduce pain.

  • Showing empathy and speaking comforting words can alleviate the pain.

  • Words can actually cause pain.

  • Traumatic experiences and psychological traumas can cause lasting changes in your brain.

 

What is pain?

Pain arises from the stimulation of sensory nerves in the body.

However, you only experience pain when your brain converts these signals into a pain sensation.

The sensors that register pain are called nociceptors.
Interestingly, your brain itself cannot feel pain, because there are no pain receptors present in the brain tissue.

In contrast, the meninges, blood vessels, muscles, and nerves in the neck, face, and scalp can cause pain.

Pain can also arise from damage within the brain or in the nervous system itself. In that case, a person may experience pain in the body.

 

Emotional pain

The pain you feel from emotions such as rejection, sadness, or hatred is processed in your brain in almost the same location as physical pain.

There is some overlap with the brain areas involved in physical pain, but some areas are less involved, such as the insula, parts of the basal ganglia, the caudate, and the putamen.

So, you can literally hurt each other with words, hatred, and rejection.

Repeated exposure to deep fear, depression, or psychological trauma can leave traces in the brain. Certain brain areas can shrink. This shrinkage is not always irreversible. Sometimes the volume can recover somewhat. See our special page.

 

Sympathy, empathy

With a few overlapping brain areas, you can feel another person's pain, just as with physical pain. That is to say, feeling sympathy for someone and having empathy.

You can shudder at the sight or hearing of someone else's pain. You can feel sad at someone else's sadness or suffering. Researchers discovered that subjective pain decreased significantly upon hearing empathetic words. Comfort and empathy therefore do indeed have an effect!

 

These brain areas appear to be important in pain

Highlighted

  • Prefrontal cortex processes pain signals in thoughts / rationales and plans the actions that are then necessary.
  • Anterior cingulate cortex / ACC registers the unpleasant, nasty feelings when something goes wrong physically or emotionally. It is also strongly involved in human empathic responses. This brain region is involved in the 'social transmission' of both pain and pain relief to the nucleus accumbens.
  • Somatosensory cortex, part of the Sensory cortex (belongs to the Parietal lobe) registers which body part is in pain and registers the intensity of that pain.
  • Insula / Island of Reil
    • The posterior insula processes all sensory information such as smell, taste, sound, somatosensory information, and pain. Empathy is also felt in the insula; feeling with another person's sorrow or pain.

 

Additionally

  • the thalamus transmits touch, pain, temperature, posture, and movement (proprioceptive) stimuli via relay stations to the sensorimotor cortex in the parietal lobe.
  • is a part of the basal ganglia, the nucleus accumbens important for pain relief. It releases dopamine and serotonin in response to pain and pleasure.
  • the medial prefrontal gyrus focuses on the negative personal impressions of pain.
  • the amygdala anticipates pain; it already feels the shock and emotion of the pain and responds to perceived threats. According to recent studies, the amygdala also plays a role in pain regulation.
  • the periaqueductal gray / PAG which is named after the gray matter surrounding the aqueduct of Sylvius in the brainstem / the midbrain. It is important in pain suppression, amplifying or weakening (modulation) of a pain impulse, and registering and interpreting (perception) of pain.

Areas and underlying connections are still being mapped.

 

 

The somatosensory cortex

In the image below, the somatosensory cortex is pink. That part is located in the parietal lobe.

The 'cortical homunculus' in the left sensory cortex reflects the sensations or pains you perceive from the body areas on the right side of the body.

Conversely, the right sensory cortex reflects the body areas on the left side of the body.

When you tickle your left cheek you know that you can 'feel' that in this somatosensory cortex in the upper right, to the side, just behind the midline.

The sense of touch in the lips, hands, feet, and genitals has more sensory nerve cells than other parts of the body; therefore, the homunculus has correspondingly large lips, hands, feet, and genitals.

These body areas are thus depicted as relatively larger or smaller in proportion depending on whether there are more or fewer sensory receptors in that body part.

Relatively speaking, the fingertips and the lips occupy the most space.

 

 

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Resources

© Hersenletsel-uitleg team neurologie en neuropsychologie

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