Papers of the Week

Our current understanding of central nervous system mechanisms supporting the experience of pain remains remarkably limited and produces substantial challenges when seeking to better diagnose and treat chronic pain. A new conceptual framework – The Distributed Nociceptive System – emphasizes system-level aspects of nociceptive processing by incorporating population coding and distributed process. The Distributed Nociceptive System provides a structure for understanding complex spatial aspects of chronic pain and provides a clear rationale for the further development of multi-disciplinary treatments for chronic pain.