NOCICEPTION ≠ PAIN

The contemporary IASP definition describes pain as an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with, or resembling that associated with, actual or potential tissue damage.

Nociception is neural processing of noxious stimuli; pain is an experience. Therefore nociceptive input ≠ subjective pain experience.

Nociceptive input + body state + attention + expectation + emotion + learning + context + memory + perceived control + social meaning → pain experience.

This does not make pain imaginary. Pain is real while dynamically produced through biological, psychological, and social processes.

Safety: pain experience and tissue damage must not be conflated. A reduced pain response does not certify that a stimulus is safe.

Removal audit: without this distinction, the entire branch would collapse neural threat processing, tissue damage, and subjective experience into one fixed signal.