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. 2022 Mar 7;13:757241. doi: 10.3389/fneur.2022.757241

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Copyright © 2022 De Ridder, Vanneste, Smith and Adhia.

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(s) 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 presence of a painful stimulus in the lateral somatosensory pathway, can lead to a cognitive, emotional, and autonomic response, encoded by the medial salience pathway expressed by suffering. When the pain and suffering become chronic, they become embodied, i.e., part of the self, mediated via connectivity of the somatosensory cortex to the default mode network. The embodied pain and suffering can subsequently lead to physical and cognitive disability, possibly mediated via dysfunctional connectivity with the motor and the central executive network, respectively.