Reshaping [Your] Reality. [2] The mental image of pain - from imagination, sensation to reality

Abstract

Sensory-perceptive activity expresses the attributes of real objects and provides information connected to both external and internal reality. Perception helps us embed the information taken from sensations, helping us form the perceptive image that must be completed by each individual in their existence. Practically, perception facilitates the adaptation to reality depending on the experiences of each individual. A method that patients may learn to control their various perceptions is self-regulation by mental images, and here we can consider various approaches to the mental image. Mental imagery is important for the perception of pain, being an easy method to manage pain. Here we can also describe the pain of the ‘phantom member,’ whom certain people that have amputated members still perceive, and which consists of cortical processing of pain, without being triggered by pain receptors, because they lack it. The data described herein confirms and helps us contour the fact that the image of a sensory circumstance may influence neuronal processes which create real sensory experiences.