title: A word expressing affective pain activates the anterior cingulate cortex in the human brain: an fMRI study.
abstract: We present an fMRI study demonstrating that an onomatopoeia word highly suggestive of subjective pain, heard by the ear, significantly activates the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) while hearing non-sense words that did not imply affective pain under the same task does not activate this area in humans. We concluded that the ACC would be a pivotal locus for perceiving affective pain evoked by an onomatopoeia word that implied affective pain closely associated with the unpleasantness of pain. We suggest that the pain affect sustained by pain unpleasantness may depend on ACC-prefrontal cortical interactions that modify cognitive evaluation of emotions associated with word-induced pain.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan. osaka@psy.bun.kyoto-u.ac.jp
authors.forename: Naoyuki
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Osaka
authors.forename: Mariko
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Osaka
authors.forename: Masanao
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Morishita
authors.forename: Hirohito
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Kondo
authors.forename: Hidenao
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Fukuyama
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000342:Affective Symptoms / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001931:Brain Mapping / Q000379:methods; D002560:Cerebrovascular Circulation; D005260:Female; D006179:Gyrus Cinguli / Q000098:blood supply / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D010146:Pain / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology; D014705:Verbal Behavior