So I found this while reading up on movement disorders (I suffer from) along w/ other CRPS II symptoms. It made me think of this post so I thought I would share. Here is the web link to read the full article. http://crps-rsd-a-better-life.blogsp...-pain-and.html

And here is the abstract written by:
David Borsook1 email, Jaymin Upadhyay1 email, Eric H Chudler2 email and Lino Becerra1 email
1 P.A.I.N. Group, Harvard Medical School, 115 Mill Street, Belmont, MA 02478, USA
2 Department of Anesthesiology, University of Washington, Box 356540, Seattle, WA 98195, USA author email corresponding author email
Molecular Pain 2010, 6:27doi:10.1186/1744-8069-6-27

A key role of the basal ganglia in pain and analgesia - insights gained through human functional imaging

Abstract

The basal ganglia (BG) are composed of several nuclei involved in neural processing related to the execution of motor, cognitive and emotional activities. Preclinical and clinical data have implicated a role for these structures in pain processing. Recently neuroimaging has added important information on BG activation in conditions of acute pain, chronic pain and as a result of drug effects. Our current understanding of alterations in cortical and sub-cortical regions in pain suggests that the BG are uniquely involved in thalamo-cortico-BG loops to integrate many aspects of pain. These include the integration of motor, emotional, autonomic and cognitive responses to pain.


The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://www.molecularpain.com/content/6/1/27