Neural Mechanisms of Pain Perception and Bridging the Explanatory Gap in Clinical Neuroscience

Speaker

ISA Visiting Fellow - Vishal Bharmauria

Department of Neurosurgery and Brain Repair, Morsani College of Medicine

Visit Prof. Bharmauria's website

The challenge of understanding how brain processes give rise to our subjective experiences is central to brain sciences. Even in response to the same stimulus, our responses differ, highlighting the gap between brain activity and conscious experience. In this lecture, I will share our recent findings on how the brain processes pain signals in anesthetized sheep. Sensory information in the brain is processed through different frequency bands (delta, theta, beta, gamma), each with a distinct function. We discovered that high-frequency brain activity (gamma) was significantly reduced in both the sensory and association areas after stimulation. However, slower brain waves (low frequency) showed more pronounced changes in the association area than in the sensory area. These slow waves were also found to predict changes in fast brain activity, especially in the association area, suggesting that different brain regions process pain signals in distinct ways. Understanding these patterns not only reveals how the brain responds to pain but also sheds light on how physical brain activity might shape our personal experiences. The topic of pain is especially compelling for audiences across various fields, from neuroscience and psychology to philosophy, as it links physical processes with emotional and subjective experiences. In the future, by bridging this gap between brain signals and feelings, this research could solve the mystery of how the brain generates thoughts and emotions.