Theories of empathy differ regarding the relative contributions of automatic resonance and perspective taking in understanding others' emotions. Patients with the rare syndrome of congenital insensitivity to pain cannot rely on "mirror matching" (i.e., resonance) mechanisms to understand the pain of others. Nevertheless, they showed normal fMRI responses to observed pain in anterior mid-cingula...

Neurophysiology. Nerve growth factor (NGF) is a neurotropic factor essential for the survival and maintenance of NGF-dependent neurons. NGF-dependent neurons include NGF-dependent primary afferents and sympathetic postganglionic neurons in the peripheral nervous system (PNS). NGF-dependent neurons in the PNS form an interface between the nervous system and the body-proper (the organism minus th...

Like many other complex biological phenomena, pain is starting to be studied at the level of the gene. Advances in molecular biological technology have allowed the cloning, mapping, and sequencing of genes, and also the ability to disrupt their function entirely (i.e. via transgenic knockouts). With these new tools at hand, pain researchers have begun in earnest the task of defining (a) which o...

Pain asymbolics feel pain, but act as if they are indifferent to it. Nikola Grahek argues that such patients present a clear counterexample to motivationalism about pain. I argue that Grahek has mischaracterised pain asymbolia. Properly understood, asymbolics have lost a general capacity to care about their bodily integrity. Asymbolics’ indifference to pain thus does not show something about th...