Department of Neuroscience, Physiology and Pharmacology, University College London, London, UK.
Trends Cogn Sci. 2013 Aug;17(8):371-8. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2013.06.002. Epub 2013 Jun 21.
Physical pain can be clearly distinguished from other states of distress. In recent years, however, the notion that social distress is experienced as physically painful has permeated the scientific literature and popular media. This conclusion is based on the overlap of brain regions that respond to nociceptive input and sociocultural distress. Here we challenge the assumption that underlies this conclusion - that physical pain can be easily inferred from a particular pattern of activated brain regions - by showing that patterns of activation commonly presumed to constitute the 'pain matrix' are largely unspecific to pain. We then examine recent analytical advances that may improve the specificity of imaging for parsing pain from a broad range of perceptually unique human experiences.
身体疼痛可以与其他痛苦状态明显区分开来。然而，近年来，社会痛苦被体验为身体疼痛的观点已经渗透到科学文献和大众媒体中。这一结论基于对伤害性输入和社会文化痛苦做出反应的大脑区域的重叠。在这里，我们通过证明通常被认为构成“疼痛矩阵”的激活模式在很大程度上与疼痛无关，来挑战这一结论所依据的假设，即身体疼痛可以很容易地从特定的大脑区域激活模式推断出来。然后，我们研究了最近的分析进展，这些进展可能会提高成像的特异性，从而将疼痛与人类广泛的独特感知经验区分开来。
