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Why some are more sensitive to pain
Robert C Coghill of Wake Forest University and his colleagues scanned the brains of people exposed to heat from a computer-controlled pad. The temperature was increased to 120 degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature that many people find distressing, but the subjects reported varying experiences of pain -- from one to nine on a 10-point scale.
Those individuals more sensitive to pain exhibited greater activity in two regions of their brains involved in processing the perception of pain, the anterior cingulate cortex and the primary somatosensory cortex, than did those more impervious to pain. "One of the most difficult aspects of treating pain had been having confidence in the accuracy of patients' self-reports of pain," Coghill says. "These findings confirm that self-reports of pain intensity are highly correlated to brain activation and that self-reports should guide treatment of pain." The results also shed light on how differences in pain sensitivity arise. "This finding raises the intriguing possibility that incoming painful information is processed by the spinal cord in a generally similar manner," Coghill notes. "But, once the brain gets involved, the experience becomes very different from one individual to the next." In their study, Coghill and colleagues used magnetic resonance imaging to assess brain function. They found that the brain regions important in registering pain lit up in those participants who said a heat stimulus was intensely painful. But those who said that the same stimulus was only mildly painful had minimal activation of those areas.
Those who reported higher levels of pain showed increased activity in the primary somatosensory cortex, which tells the brain where a painful stimulus is located in the body and how intense it is, and in the anterior cingulate cortex, which is involved in processing the unpleasant feelings evoked by pain. Compiled from the Net
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When it comes to pain, some people are tougher than others. New findings suggest that these differences are all in the head. Research published online this week by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences show for the first time that variation in how people perceive pain results from differences in brain activity.
During the study, 17 healthy volunteers (eight women and nine men) had a computer-controlled heat stimulator placed on their leg. While their brains were scanned, the device heated a small patch of skin to 120 degrees Fahrenheit, which most people find painful. 
