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The Journal of Neuroscience, October 18, 2006, 26(42):10879-10882; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2386-06.2006

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Brief Communications
Pain Processing Is Faster than Tactile Processing in the Human Brain

Markus Ploner, Joachim Gross, Lars Timmermann, and Alfons Schnitzler

Department of Neurology, Heinrich-Heine-University, D-40225 Düsseldorf, Germany

Correspondence should be addressed to Dr. Markus Ploner, Department of Neurology, Heinrich-Heine-University, Moorenstrasse 5, 40225 Düsseldorf, Germany. Email: ploner{at}neurologie.uni-duesseldorf.de

Pain signals threat and drives the individual into a behavioral response that significantly depends on a short stimulus-response latency. Paradoxically, the peripheral and spinal conduction velocities of pain are much slower than of tactile information. However, cerebral processing times and reaction times of touch and pain have not yet been fully assessed. Here we show that reaction times to selective nociceptive cutaneous laser stimuli are substantially faster than expected from the peripheral conduction velocities. Furthermore, by using magnetoencephalography, we found that latencies between earliest stimulus-evoked cortical responses and reaction times are 60 ms shorter for nociceptive than for tactile stimuli. These findings reveal that cerebral processing of pain is substantially faster than processing of tactile information and relatively compensates for the slow peripheral and spinal conduction velocities of pain. Our observation shows how the cerebral organization of pain processing enhances motor responses to potentially harmful stimuli and thereby subserves the particular behavioral demands of pain.

Key words: pain; nociception; touch; somatosensory cortices; reaction times; magnetoencephalography

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Received Aug. 7, 2006; revised Sept. 8, 2006; accepted Sept. 10, 2006.

Correspondence should be addressed to Dr. Markus Ploner, Department of Neurology, Heinrich-Heine-University, Moorenstrasse 5, 40225 Düsseldorf, Germany. Email: ploner{at}neurologie.uni-duesseldorf.de

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