Principles & Practice of Pain Medicine > Part III. Psychological Evaluation and Treatment of Chronic Pain > Chapter 12. Psychological Aspects of Pain Dennis C. Turk and Akiko Okifuji

Unidimensional Sensory Model

"Historically, pain has been understood from the perspective of Cartesian dualism wherein pain was viewed as purely sensory, reflecting the degrees of incoming noxious sensory stimuli. This perspective assumes that there are two ends to a pain pathway. At the periphery are sensory receptors where noxious information is received; at the other end, regions located in the brain where information is registered passively. From this perspective, noxious stimulation inevitably results in the sensation of pain, as if pulling a string at the periphery activates a bell located in the brain. Variations of this model have been prominent since first proposed by Aristotle...."