The mechanism of the development of pain perception

Abstract Pain, as a subjective content of consciousness, is an essential attention-calling sign that helps to survive. It is obligatory for every physician to relieve pain, but pain is different in each individual, which makes analgesia difficult to carry out. Improving neuroimaging techniques have made it possible for us to have a better understanding of the neural processes accompanying the development of pain perception. On the basis of 24 articles found as a result of the search on PubMed for keywords “pain” and “neuroimaging”, here we review the various parts of the pain neuron matrix, their tasks and the assumed mechanism of the shaping of acute pain perception. The shaping of individual pain perception is regulated by the modular function of the medial part of the pain matrix, cognitive regulation including attention, preliminary expectations, re-evaluation, and by affective regulation. Experimental results of emphatic pain suggest that pain perception may also occur without a real, tissue-damaging...