Brain correlates of subjective reality of physically and psychologically induced pain

American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis,  Jul 2005  by Wickramsekera, Ian II

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Raij, T., Numminen, J., Närvänen, S., Hiltunen, J., Hari, R. (2005). Brain correlates of subjective reality of physically and psychologically induced pain. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 102 (6), 2147-2152. In this experiment the authors examined the neurophenomenology of pain perception and fMRI correlates of hypnotic suggestions to experience painful hallucinations.

Fourteen subjects rated the subjective reality of their experiences with either hypnotically hallucinated pain or pain that was induced by laser pulses to the skin during fMRI recording. Both conditions (laser vs. hypnosis) produced similar fMRI correlates associated with the activation of the human pain response. Sensory components of the pain response were evoked more strongly with laser stimulation and were associated with a higher sense of the subjective reality of the painful stimulation. The reality estimates were lower during hypnosis induced pain and were associated with positive correlations in the rostral and perigenual anterior cingulate cortex and in the pericingulate regions of the medial prefrontal cortex. The authors interpret their findings to indicate that the sensory-discriminative processing characteristics of pain contribute more to the subjective reality of pain than other neurophysiological processing centers. The authors also argue for a probable role of the medial prefrontal cortex in monitoring the source of the painful stimulation (sensory vs. hallucinated) which influences the neurophenomenology of how noxious stimuli are experienced and processed. Email address: raijtu@neuro.hut.fi

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