Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Cognitive Neuroscience Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 391 - 394 of 394

Full-Text Articles in Cognitive Neuroscience

Pain-Capable Neural Substrates May Be Widely Available In The Animal Kingdom, Edgar T. Walters Jan 2016

Pain-Capable Neural Substrates May Be Widely Available In The Animal Kingdom, Edgar T. Walters

Animal Sentience

Neural and behavioral evidence from diverse species indicates that some forms of pain may be generated by coordinated activity in networks far smaller than the cortical pain matrix in mammals. Studies on responses to injury in squid suggest that simplification of the circuitry necessary for conscious pain might be achieved by restricting awareness to very limited information about a noxious event, possibly only to the fact that injury has occurred, ignoring information that is much less important for survival, such as the location of the injury. Some of the neural properties proposed to be critical for conscious pain in mammals …


How Not To Move The Line Drawn On Pain, Bjorn H. Merker Jan 2016

How Not To Move The Line Drawn On Pain, Bjorn H. Merker

Animal Sentience

In this second commentary I outline the inadequacy of Key's responses to the many peer critiques of his thesis that have so far appeared in Animal Sentience. I illustrate with examples drawn from his response to my first commentary.


Nonverbal Indicators Of Pain, Simon Van Rysewyk Jan 2016

Nonverbal Indicators Of Pain, Simon Van Rysewyk

Animal Sentience

In discussing fish pain, Key (2016) privileges pain in humans — “the only species able to directly report on its feelings.” Human experience of pain is not necessarily best reflected by verbal self-report, however. Neural responses to noxious stimuli are influenced by individual differences and by context. Nonverbal pain displays such as facial expressions reflect part of the neural response to noxious stimuli. Most mammals have a specific facial grimace reflecting pain. If fish have a somatic expression of pain, the development of a reliable and accurate somatic pain scale specific to fish could make a contribution to the debate …


Fish Pain: An Inconvenient Truth, Culum Brown Jan 2016

Fish Pain: An Inconvenient Truth, Culum Brown

Animal Sentience

Whether fish feel pain is a hot political topic. The consequences of our denial are huge given the billions of fish that are slaughtered annually for human consumption. The economic costs of changing our commercial fishery harvest practices are also likely to be great. Key outlines a structure-function analogy of pain in humans, tries to force that template on the rest of the vertebrate kingdom, and fails. His target article has so far elicited 34 commentaries from scientific experts from a broad range of disciplines; only three of these support his position. The broad consensus from the scientific community is …