• Marshall Devor.
• Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, Silberman Institute of Life Sciences, and the Center for Research on Pain, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Givat Ram Campus, Jerusalem, Israel.
• Pain. 2025 Jan 1; 166 (1): 111911-19.

AbstractPain is a sensory and emotional experience. How did Pat Wall, founding editor of the journal PAIN and recognized pain guru, view the relation between the brain and the experience of pain? He was certain what it is not. It is not impulses in peripheral nociceptors that light up neurons in a central pain nucleus. Rather, it is a complex "signature" of brain activity normally driven by sensory stimuli, but in the event of pathology also from ectopic sources in injured nerves and associated dorsal root ganglia. Pain signatures are modulated in many ways: suppressed by gate control and descending brain pathways, augmented by peripheral and central sensitization, and massaged by abundant central feedback and feedforward loops. Pain experience is a complex function of a conscious brain. Ultimately, to understand pain is to understand conscious perception.Copyright © 2024 International Association for the Study of Pain.

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