Ethan Cho

Pain serves as a warning signal to the human body. The two main types of physical pain are visceral pain, which originates in the organs or blood vessels, and somatic pain, which originates in the skin, bones, tissues, or muscles. There are many brain regions where pain receptors give data on where pain has been caused, such as the anterior cingulate cortex. When humans or other animals experience pain, there is interference with cognition. Past studies show that visceral pain causes a greater amount of cognition problems compared to somatic pain, yet this follows an unreliable trend. Chronic pain is the constant feeling of pain over a long period of time commonly associated with chronic diseases. It could be possible to cure chronic pain with more knowledge of how other factors influence those with chronic pain conditions by being able to neutralize a certain pain hormone with a special kind of medication. However, due to the brain's complexity, researchers cannot understand how exactly the brain processes pain. 

Current knowledge on visceral pain and somatic pain state that both are similar throughout patients with all kinds of pain tolerance, although visceral pain is thought of as more painful. When visceral pain is experienced, there is increased activity in some of the same brain regions as when somatic pain is experienced, such as the cingulate and insular cortex. Furthermore, researchers observed stress levels and cognition to see how they affect or are affected by somatic and visceral pain. Using fMRIs, brain scanning devices that observe blood flow to the brain, it is possible to identify the brain regions involved in processing pain. Future research shows promising methods of studying the brain to figure out the brain’s way of processing visceral and somatic pain and how they differ.