University of Oxford
Activity in a brain area known as the dorsal posterior insula is directly related to the intensity of pain, a brain imaging study of 17 people has found.
Researchers at the Oxford Centre for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain used a new brain imaging technique to look at people experiencing pain over many hours. Activity in only one brain area, the dorsal posterior insula, reflected the participants' ratings of how much the pain hurt.
These results, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, could help detect pain in people with limited communication abilities, such as those in a coma, small children and dementia patients.
"We have identified the brain area likely to be responsible for the core, 'it hurts', experience of pain," said Professor Irene Tracey, University of Oxford, whose team made the discovery. "Pain is a complex, multidimensional experience, which causes activity in many brain regions involved with things like attention, feeling emotions such as fear, locating where the pain is, and so on. But the dorsal posterior insula seems to be specific to the actual 'hurt level' of pain itself."
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