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Eleshia Peterson
Professor Lofgren
Biology 1615
7 April 2015
Research Paper: Distinct Brain Systems Mediate the Effects of Nociceptive Input and Self-Regulation on
Pain
Having chosen to venture into the field of anesthesia, I decided to look into how the
human body handles pain on its own. The realm of pain management is a plethora of blanketing
for what may and may not help the individual feel relief without the use of prescriptions. I have
been taught that pain is regulated through one system known as the nociceptive process. In the
research article Distinct Brain Systems Mediate the Effects of Nociceptive Input and SelfRegulation on Pain two multidimensional pain pathways were tested against self-regulation:
nociceptive/affective aspects and evaluative/functional aspects. Participants engaged in selfregulation to increase or decrease pain while experiencing multiple levels of painful heat during
functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) (Woo et al). The purpose of testing the
regulation is to see if and how self-regulation affects both pain aspects, and if we can apply the
self-regulation to treatments such as expectancy and drug treatments.
In this article, the authors wrote about how pain is a multidimensional experience, with
sensory, cognitive, and evaluative aspects (Woo et al). I learned that to be able to test the two
aspects, nociceptive/affective and evaluative/functional, brain markers had to be placed as a
control prior to testing. They then had to further their control by testing the sensory/affective
responses by manipulating each independently. If manipulation A affects brain process 1 but not
2, and manipulation B affects brain process 2 but not 1, then the brain process are said to be

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separately modifiable (Woo et al). This is commonly referred to as the top-bottom and
bottom-up. By testing these separately, I learned they were able to find that there is more than
just the medial/lateral processors that use nociception, and instead there is more of a quantitative
multidimensional processor of pain neurophysiology. The identification of these separately
modifiable pathways provides a step towards a quantitative assessment of multiple
neurophysiological components of pain (Woo et al).
The findings of this study touched on pain being affected by self-regulation and
pernicious input, but more so, at least in my eyes, opened the realm for more extensive testing to
be put into place now knowing that the processors are quantitative multidimensional. If more
tests are performed, limiting the different processors (i.e. top-bottom and bottom-top) on
these various dimensions, then we will open new ways for pain management to exist; whether
this be pharmaceutically or physiologically. Pain has been widely thought to arise from
interactions among sensory, affective and evaluative processes (Woo et al). All of the new
possibilities for pain management were found while in discovery that all of the processors affect
and manipulate each other. Concluding that self-regulation (in forms of psychotherapy), on some
levels, can indeed lessen the senses of pain by taking down the emotion that arises with it.
From this article, I also learned that it is imperative to make note on what tests and
controls are being put into place and what could be done differently on similar tests in the future
to not stay so focused on what you are set out to find that you miss the opportunity to discover
additional or new material. Without these types of notes, trials and errors, we would not be
researching further dimensions of the pain processors or bettering future tests for self-regulation.

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Works Cited
Woo, Choong-Wan, Mthieu Roy, Jason T. Buhle, and Tor D. Wager. Distinct Brain System
Mediate the Effects of Nociceptive Input and Self-Regulation on Pain. Plos Biology. 6
Jan 2015. Plos.org. Web. 26 Jan 2015.
<http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1002036>