Vania Apkarian a,*, M. Catherine Bushnell b, Rolf-Detlef Treede c, Jon-Kar Zubieta d a Department of Physiology, Northwestern University Medical School, 303 E. Chicago Avenue, Ward 5-003, Chicago, IL 60611, USA b Department of Anesthesia, McGill University, Montreal, Canada c Institute of Physiology and Pathophysiology, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany d Department of Psychiatry and …
Ronald Melzack, Ph.D. Abstract The neuromatrix theory of pain proposes that pain is a multidimensional experience produced by characteristic “neurosignature” patterns of nerve impulses generated by a widely distributed neural network—the “body-self neuromatrix”—in the brain. These neurosignature patterns may be triggered by sensory inputs, but they may also be generated independently of them. Acute pains …
Melzack S U M M A R Y The gate control theory’s most important contribution to understanding pain was its emphasis on central neural mechanisms. The theory forced the medical and biological sciences to accept the brain as an active system that filters, selects and modulates inputs. The dorsal horns, too, were not merely passive …
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