title: [Pain words activate pain-processing neural structures].
abstract: Previous studies suggested that areas of the neural"pain matrix" are activated by the processing of pain-related environmental cues such as pain-related pictures or descriptors of pain. However, it is still sketchy whether these activations are specific to the pain-relevant content of the stimuli or simply reflect a general effect of negative emotional valence or increased arousal. The present study addressed this question by investigating the neural mechanisms underlying the processing of pain-related, negative (non-pain-related), positive and neutral words. When subjects were instructed to image a situation associated with the word presented (imagination task), we found increased activation within the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and inferior parietal cortex (IPC) when processing pain-related words compared to other words. When attention was focused on a distracting task (distraction task), we found a decrease in activation within the dorsal anterior cingulum (dACC) and a relative increase in activation within the subgenual anterior cingulum (sACC) when processing pain-related words compared to other words. These results indicate that the differences in processing pain-related words compared to non-pain-related words are specific to the content of the words and cannot simply be explained by emotional valence or arousal. Additionally, we showed that the specific activations to pain-related words are substantially modulated by the attention demands of the task.
authors.affiliation: Institut für Psychologie, Lehrstuhl für Klinische und Biologische Psychologie, Am Steiger 3/1, 07743 Jena, Deutschland. Maria.Richter@med.uni-jena.de
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Richter
authors.forename: W
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Miltner
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Weiss
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001143:Arousal / Q000502:physiology; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D003463:Cues; D006179:Gyrus Cinguli / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D007092:Imagination / Q000502:physiology*; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D009415:Nerve Net / Q000503:physiopathology; D010146:Pain / Q000503:physiopathology*; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000503:physiopathology*; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000503:physiopathology*; D012016:Reference Values; D012660:Semantics