The pain system: A multilevel model for the study of motivation and emotion

Pain research provides complimentary physiological and psychological models of parallel processing and interactions in this complex perceptual, emotional, and motivational system. The complexity of the physiological system is clearly permissive of a broad array of interactions among affective and cognitive processes, e.g., pain reduction by hypnotic blocking and by the apparently contradictory process of sensation monitoring. Research on a variety of these issues is described in the articles presented in this issue. Meaning, in particular, plays a central role in generating the emotional component of the pain system; meaning and the formation of pain memories play a critical role in the formation and treatment of chronic pain.Preparation of this article was supported by NIA grant AG03501.