Evidence for involvement of the frontal cortex in pain-related cerebral events in cats: increase in local cerebral blood flow by noxious stimuli.

Noxious stimuli were shown to induce a remarkable increase in local cerebral blood flow restricted to the forepart of the cerebral hemispheres bilaterally anterior to the posterior sigmoid gyrus in cats. This increase in local cerebral blood flow was averted by lesions in the bilateral ventromedial thalamus and attenuated by pretreatment with an intraventricular injection of 6-hydroxydopamine.