Pain: Attention to pain localization and unpleasantness discriminates the functions of the medial and lateral pain systems.

Entrez PubMed: "Attention to location increased responses in the contralateral (right) primary somatosensory and inferior parietal cortices. This result implies that these components of the lateral pain system are concerned mainly with the localization of pain. In contrast, attention to unpleasantness increased responses in bilateral perigenual cingulate and orbitofrontal cortices, contralateral (right) amygdala, ipsilateral (left) hypothalamus, posterior insula, M1 and frontal pole. These areas comprise key components of the medial pain and neuroendocrine systems and the results suggest that they have a role in the affective response to pain. Our results indicate the importance of attentional effects on the pattern of nociceptive processing in the brain. They also provide the first clear demonstration, within a single experiment, of a major division of function within the neural pain matrix."

Attention to pain localization and unpleasantness discriminates the functions of the medial and lateral pain systems.
Kulkarni B, Bentley DE, Elliott R, Youell P, Watson A, Derbyshire SW, Frackowiak RS, Friston KJ, Jones AK.
Eur J Neurosci. 2005 Jun;21(11):3133-42.