BOLD Responses in Somatosensory Cortices Better Reflect Heat Sensation than Pain

The discovery of cortical networks that participate in pain processing has led to the common generalization that blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) responses in these areas indicate the processing of pain. Physical stimuli have fundamental properties that elicit sensations distinguishable from pain, such as heat. We hypothesized that pain intensity coding may reflect the intensity coding of heat sensation during the presentation of thermal stimuli during fMRI. Six 3T fMRI heat scans were collected for 16 healthy subjects, corresponding to perceptual levels of “low innocuous heat,” “moderate innocuous heat,” “high innocuous heat,” “low painful heat,” “moderate painful heat,” and “high painful heat” delivered by a contact thermode to the face. Subjects rated pain and heat intensity separately after each scan. A general linear model analysis detected different patterns of brain activation for the different phases of the biphasic response to heat. During high painful heat, the early phase was associated with significant anterior insula and anterior cingulate cortex activation. Persistent responses were detected in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and inferior parietal lobule. Only the late phase showed significant correlations with perceptual ratings. Significant heat intensity correlated activation was identified in contralateral primary and secondary somatosensory cortices, motor cortex, and superior temporal lobe. These areas were significantly more related to heat ratings than pain. These results indicate that heat intensity is encoded by the somatosensory cortices, and that pain evaluation may either arise from multimodal evaluative processes, or is a distributed process.