Pain and the avatar

Abstract

Abstract In pain asymbolia, patients say that they are aware of pain but that it does not bother them or it feels as ‘if it’ is not their pain.. Pain asymbolia results from the processing of nociceptive signals not modelled as belonging to the self. Lack of affective response to pain in asymbolia is a consequence, not a cause, of inability to represent the nociceptive signal as ‘mine’. This interpretation is consistent with neural correlates not only of pain asymbolia, but also of a variety of pain and self-related conditions. It also reconciles depersonalization accounts of pain asymbolia with the classic sensorimotor-limbic disconnection accounts that explain it as a phenomenon of ‘hypoemotionality’.