TRANSMISSION OR TRANSFORMATION - INFORMATION-PROCESSING THEORY OF CHRONIC HUMAN PAIN

Chronic pain results from a series of mental events that occur between the presentation of a noxious stimulus and the behavioral response. Central control processes transform nociceptive information into cognitions, emotions, and behaviors. The suffering associated with chronic human pain reflects a breakdown in or alteration of the information processing system at the central control level that results in an inability to integrate additional incoming noxious data into adaptive information processing routines and thereby elicit effective coping strategies. The model presented here requires a conceptual shift-from a long-standing tradition of pain theory, based on nociceptive transmission, to a pain theory based on the transformation of sensory data into information that is perceived, appraised, and acted upon.