Drawing the line on pain

Abstract

The structure of Key's (2016) argument that fish do not feel pain is flawed, betraying a fundamental lack of understanding of the nature of feelings and their role in the brain's functional division of labor. The evidence Key marshals in support of his premature commitment to an exclusively corticocentric view of consciousness in humans is plagued by repeated failures of scholarship. Bjorn Merker gyr694c@tninet.se is a neuroscientist with longstanding interest in brain mechanisms of consciousness: He has worked on subcortical mechanisms of orienting behavior in rodents and cats, mirror self-recognition in gibbons, and structural principles intrinsic to the neural organization of a conscious state. Fjälkestadsv. 410-82, SE-29194 Kristianstad, Sweden.