Question

The sensation felt along the medial aspect of the left arm during heart attack, when in reality occurs due to the stimulation of visceral pain pathways, is an example of:

Answer 1

Referred pain is the conscious perception of visceral sensation projected to a different region of the body, such as the left shoulder and arm pain during a heart attack.

Step-by-step explanation:

When particularly strong visceral sensations rise to the level of conscious perception, the sensations are often felt in unexpected places. For example, strong visceral sensations of the heart will be felt as pain in the left shoulder and left arm. This irregular pattern of projection of conscious perception of visceral sensations is called referred pain. The most broadly accepted theory for this phenomenon is that the visceral sensory fibers enter into the same level of the spinal cord as the somatosensory fibers of the referred pain location. By this explanation, the visceral sensory fibers from the mediastinal region, where the heart is located, would enter the spinal cord at the same level as the spinal nerves from the shoulder and arm, so the brain misinterprets the sensations from the mediastinal region as being from the axillary and brachial regions.