Skip to main content
. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2019 Mar 1.
Published in final edited form as: J Neuroimmune Pharmacol. 2017 Sep 2;13(1):77–89. doi: 10.1007/s11481-017-9762-5

Figure 1. Regions of Interest Selected from the Pain Matrix.

Figure 1

The pain matrix (modified from Melzack, 2001) and the highlighted brain regions are those shown to be abnormal in patients with pain (Apkarian et al., 2005; Melzack, 2005; Tracey and Mantyh, 2007; Schweinhardt and Bushnell, 2010; Oertel et al., 2012; Hashmi et al., 2013; Atlas et al., 2014). The pain matrix comprises regions involved in pain processing and pain modulation. These brain regions are grouped into 3 different pain components: sensory or discriminative, affective and associative, which are all interconnected to each other. The sensory or discriminative component comprised mainly of the thalamus (Thal) and the somatosensory cortex (SSC) The affective component includes the brainstem, Thal, the limbic system [amygdala, hippocampus, basal ganglia (BG)], prefrontal cortex (PFC), anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and, insula (IN). The associative component includes the posterior parietal cortex (PPC). The regions surrounded with white halo are the regions of interest selected for the current study.