Converging evidence suggests that sensory information is transiently stored in sensory-specific cortical areas that perform the initial encoding of those stimuli (Pasternak & Greenlee, 2005). Although human primary somatosensory cortex (SI) has been shown to be a transient storage site for tactile information (Harris et al., 2002), little is known about the role of SI in the retention of noxious sensory information. Using a delayed discrimination paradigm and 1.5-T fMRI (see Duerden et al, SFN Abstract 2005), we investigated the neural basis of encoding and retention of heat pain stimuli applied to the right palm in 8 healthy volunteers (6-s stimuli; 6-, 8-, or 10-s inter-stimulus intervals ISI; random presentation of MEMORY and CONTROL tasks). When compared to a resting baseline, heat pain stimuli in both the MEMORY and CONTROL tasks yielded a comparable increase in the BOLD response (T=6.82 to 13.0) in areas known to process noxious stimuli: contralateral SI and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), bilateral...