Pain and the evolutionary origins of subjective experience

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

Abstract

The cerebral neocortex is essential for the complex feature extractions underlying sensory perception. Pain is an exception. Its adaptive message, fight or flee, is already available at the first central synapse. We propose that raw consciousness emerged with pain. Eons later the cortical supercomputer began providing complex computational output to the primeval circuitry of conscious pain experience, already operating subcortically.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere80
JournalBehavioral and Brain Sciences
Volume48
DOIs
StatePublished - 3 Nov 2025

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press.

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