Punishment limbic system

Pain and fear of pain are perhaps the most powerful of aversive stimuli and the most immediately important for survival since they carry the threat of tissue damage. Melzack and Wall (1988) described three components of pain sensory-discriminative from peripheral nociceptors, emotional or motivational-affective, involving limbic system punishment pathways, and rational or cognitive-evaluative derived from cerebral cortex. Excitatory and inhibitory feed-back systems link all components. 

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