ABSTRACT
The pain pathway The pain pathway (Figure 24.1) suggests reference to the simplistic nociceptive pathways of a three-neuron chain, with the first-order neuron originating in the periphery and projecting to the spinal cord, the second-order neuron ascending the spinal cord, and the third-order neuron projecting into the cerebral cortex and other supraspinal structures. ‘For every complex issue, there is an answer that is simple, neat… and wrong!’ Pain is not a stimulus. There are no ‘pain fibers’ in nerves and no ‘pain pathways’ in the brain. The experience of pain is the final product of a complex information-processing network.
