title: Evidence against pain specificity in the dorsal posterior insula.
abstract: The search for a "pain centre" in the brain has long eluded neuroscientists.  Although many regions of the brain have been shown to respond to painful stimuli, all of these regions also respond to other types of salient stimuli. In a recent paper, Segerdahl et al. (Nature Neuroscience, 2015)  claims that the dorsal posterior insula (dpIns) is a pain-specific region based on the observation that the magnitude of regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) fluctuations in the dpIns correlated with the magnitude of evoked pain.  However, such a conclusion is, simply, not justified by the experimental evidence provided.  Here we discuss three major factors that seriously question this claim.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Medical Science and Department of Surgery, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, M5T 2S8, Canada ; Division of Brain Imaging and Behaviour - Systems Neuroscience, Toronto Western Research Institute, Toronto, ON, M5T 2S8, Canada ; Joint Department of Medical Imaging, University Health Network, Toronto, ON, M5T 2S8, Canada.
authors.forename: Karen D
authors.initials: KD
authors.lastname: Davis
authors.affiliation: Pain and Integrative Neuroscience Branch, Division of Intramural Research, National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH), National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, 20892-1302, USA.
authors.forename: M Catherine
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Bushnell
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuroscience, Physiology and Pharmacology, University College London, London, WC1E 6BT, UK.
authors.forename: Gian Domenico
authors.initials: GD
authors.lastname: Iannetti
authors.affiliation: Lawson Health Research Institute, London, ON, N6A 4V2, Canada ; Department of Medical Biophysics, The University of Western Ontario, London, ON, N6A 4V2, Canada.
authors.forename: Keith
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: St Lawrence
authors.affiliation: Department of Anesthesiology, Cincinnati Children's Hospital, Cincinnati, OH, 45229-3026, USA.
authors.forename: Robert
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Coghill
keywords: ASL; Pain; brain imaging; insula