(Study Finds) – Stimulate the cortex, the wrinkled outer layer of the brain long credited with thought and self-awareness, and it almost never produces pain. Stimulate pain pathways running through the brainstem, a much older structure buried at the base of the skull, and pain follows.
That contrast anchors a new theory in the journal The Neuroscientist, in which researchers Marshall Devor and Mark Baron argue that the basic feeling of being alive, the sense of a “me inside,” comes from the brainstem rather than the brain’s thinking layer. Some children are born with almost no cerebral cortex. By traditional logic, they should feel nothing. CONTINUE