Neuroreport
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It is well known that emotion can modify the experience of pain. However, it is unclear how an emotional state and its concomitant neural activity affects activity in brain regions responsive to pain, thus altering the experience of pain itself. In this study, we examined the effect of sad mood on perception of painful stimuli and used functional MRI (fMRI) to identify neural activity changes in 15 participants who, in separate trials, (a) received painful electric shocks; (b) experienced a sad mood; and (c) received electric shocks as they were experiencing a sad mood. ⋯ The 'pain-processing' areas included the secondary somatosensory cortex and the adjacent posterior insula (pIn/SII) as well as periaqueductal gray. The 'emotional-processing' regions included the subgenual cingulate cortex and the amygdala. On the basis of these results, we suggest that increased activation in the pIn/SII is part of a top-down system of pain facilitation that includes the anterior cingulate cortex, amygdala, and periaqueductal gray.