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. 2018 Mar 26;12:18. doi: 10.3389/fncom.2018.00018

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Copyright © 2018 Shirvalkar, Veuthey, Dawes and Chang.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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The Kanizsa triangle can be used to represent a multidimensional framework for pain. Pain is an underlying state made apparent by three types of observable symptoms (somatosensory, affective, and cognitive). Therapies which selectively address a single facet of pain risk misinterpreting aspects of symptoms (the “shape” of the symptoms) outside of the context of the larger pathology. The optimal way to “break” the pain state might lie in modulation (or “re-orienting”) the facets of pain rather than trying to suppress them (adapted from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kanizsa_triangle.svg; Accessed on March 14, 2018).