Submitted on April 21, 2009
Revised on June 4, 2009
Accepted on June 24, 2009
Is the insula the "how much" intensity coder?
Massieh Moayedi1* and Irit Weissman-Fogel1
1 University Health Network
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: mmoayedi{at}uhnres.utoronto.ca.
The perception of all sensations includes some sort of magnitude estimate used to calibrate behaviour. However it is not known whether unique intensity coding mechanisms exist for specific modalities or whether a common, centralized magnitude estimator operates for all sensations. Here, we discuss findings regarding pain intensity coding, and the role of the insula in pain in light of the recent article by Baliki et al. that proposes the insula as a multimodal magnitude estimator.
