Secondary somatosensory cortex is important for the sensory discriminative dimension of pain: a functional MRI-study

A complex cortical network is believed to encode the multi-dimensionality of the human pain experience. In the present study, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine whether the brain's processing of noxious stimuli differs with different psychophysical properties. Painful mechanical impact and heat stimulations of equal stimulus intensity were applied to the forearm of fourteen subjects in a randomised order. Concomitantly, subjects had to evaluate the corresponding sensory-discriminative and affective-motivational pain dimensions. fMRI revealed an increased activation of bilateral secon…