Editorial: The Role of Primary Motor Cortex as a Marker and Modulator of Pain Control and Emotional-Affective Processing.

Jorge Leite,Linamara R Battistella,Sandra Carvalho,Felipe Fregni,Wolnei Caumo

doi:10.3389/fnhum.2017.00270

Abstract

JL and SC are supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) and European Union (FSE-POPH) with individual awards SFRH/BPD/86027/2012) and (IF/00091/2015). JL, SC are members of CIPSi, supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology and the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education through national funds and co-financed by FEDER through COMPETE2020 under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007653); and also through the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology PTDC/MHC-PCN/3950/2014. FF is funded by the following NIH grants: R21HD079048, R01HD082302, 1R44NS080632-01, 1R44AT008637, HD069776.

Highlights

In the 1940–50’s Wilder Penfield and colleagues applied cortical electrical stimulation to patients undergoing epilepsy surgery to define what has become one of the landmarks on neuroscience: a map of the anatomical divisions of the body, divided in two cortical homunculi: sensory and motor (Penfield and Boldrey, 1937)
The involvement of the M1 region in higher cognitive functions has been demonstrated in emotional processing
There seems to be a correlation between sensorimotor activation and empathy (Lamm et al, 2007), as well as relationship between sensorimotor activation and emotional processing in silent reading of emotionally laden words (Papeo et al, 2012)

Summary

Introduction

In the 1940–50’s Wilder Penfield and colleagues applied cortical electrical stimulation to patients undergoing epilepsy surgery to define what has become one of the landmarks on neuroscience: a map of the anatomical divisions of the body, divided in two cortical homunculi: sensory and motor (Penfield and Boldrey, 1937). The involvement of the M1 region in higher cognitive functions has been demonstrated in emotional processing. The involvement of the M1 region in higher cognitive functions was supported by a recent meta-analysis of neuroimaging findings in which an activation likelihood estimation was used to determine topographic convergence (Tomasino and Gremese, 2016).

Results

Conclusion