Figure 2. Afferent pain pathways include multiple brain regions.
Afferent nociceptive information enters the brain from the spinal cord. Afferent spinal pathways include the spinothalamic, spinoparabrachio–amygdaloid and spinoreticulo–thalamic pathways. Nociceptive information from the thalamus is projected to the insula, anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), primary somatosensory cortex (S1) and secondary somatosensory cortex (S2), whereas information from the amygdala (AMY) is projected to the basal ganglia (BG). See the main text for references. PAG, periaqueductal grey; PB, parabrachial nucleus; PFC, prefrontal cortex.