ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a pain sensory system and a putative neuromatrix governing the sense of a selfbody image. The physiological bases of pain focus most minutely on acute pain. Closely associated with the problem and complexity of chronic pain is the focused attention given to neurological processes associated with the phenomena of pain in more recent years. Such studies have tried to describe pain in relation to other sensory systems or, alternatively, in relation to larger cognitive systems. At one extreme is the philosophical analysis of pain based upon biological materialism, that is, based upon the neuro-physiology of the brain. Pain, as the discussions of the physiological and phenomenal nature of pain, is a complex of the elusive intersection of three overlapping circles, namely cognition, sensation, and emotion, and as such the phenomenon of human pain integrates scientific fact and individual/cultural experience.
