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Poor judgment of distance between nociceptive stimuli.

ABSTRACT: Although pain is traditionally assumed to be poorly localized, recent work indicates that spatial acuity for nociception is surprisingly high. Here we investigated whether the nervous system can also accurately estimate the distance between two nociceptive stimuli. Estimating distance implies a metric representation of spatial relations, a property that underlies abilities such as perceiving the size of external objects. We presented pairs of simultaneous nociceptive or non-nociceptive somatosensory stimuli, and asked participants to judge the distance between them. Judgments of distance between nociceptive stimuli were much worse than judgments of distance between non-nociceptive tactile stimuli, even on skin regions where spatial acuity for nociception exceeded spatial acuity for touch. Control experiments ruled out explanations based on inaccurate localization of double nociceptive stimuli. Thus, the nervous system poorly represents the distance between two nociceptive stimuli. The dissociation between high spatial acuity and poor distance judgment in the nociceptive system may reflect a specialization for computing accurate spatial representations useful to protect the body, rather than to perceive the size of external objects.

SUBMITTER: Mancini F

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4534310 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Poor judgment of distance between nociceptive stimuli.

Mancini Flavia F Steinitz Hannah H Steckelmacher James J Iannetti Gian Domenico GD Haggard Patrick P

Cognition 20150623

Although pain is traditionally assumed to be poorly localized, recent work indicates that spatial acuity for nociception is surprisingly high. Here we investigated whether the nervous system can also accurately estimate the distance between two nociceptive stimuli. Estimating distance implies a metric representation of spatial relations, a property that underlies abilities such as perceiving the size of external objects. We presented pairs of simultaneous nociceptive or non-nociceptive somatosen ...[more]

PMID: 26113448

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Project description:ObjectiveThe perception of pain is susceptible to modulation by psychological and contextual factors. It has been shown that subjects judge noxious stimuli as more painful in a respective suggestive context, which disappears when the modifying context is resolved. However, a context in which subjects judge the painfulness of a nociceptive stimulus in exactly the opposite direction to that of the cues has never been shown so far.MethodsNociceptive stimuli (300 ms intranasal gaseous CO2) at the individual pain threshold level were applied after a visual cue announcing the stimulus as either "no pain", merely a "stimulus", or "pain". Among the stimuli at threshold level, other CO2 stimuli that were clearly below or above pain threshold were randomly interspersed. These were announced beforehand in 12 subjects randomly with correct or incorrect cues, i.e., clearly painful or clearly non-painful stimuli were announced equally often as not painful or painful. By contrast, in a subsequent group of another 12 subjects, the stimuli were always announced correctly with respect to the evoked pain.ResultsThe random and often incorrect announcement of stimuli clearly below or above pain threshold caused the subjects to rate the stimuli at pain-threshold level in the opposite direction of the cue, i.e., when the stimuli were announced as "pain" significantly more often than as non-painful and vice versa (p < 10(-4)). By contrast, in the absence of incongruence between announcement and perception of the far-from-threshold stimuli, stimuli at pain threshold were rated in the cued direction.ConclusionsThe present study revealed the induction of associations incongruent with a given message in the perception of pain. We created a context of unreliable cues whereby subjects perceived the stimulus opposite to that suggested by a prior cue, i.e., potentially nociceptive stimuli at pain threshold level that were announced as painful were judged as non-painful and vice versa. These findings are consistent with reported data on the effects of distrust on non-painful cognitive responses.

Dataset Information

Poor judgment of distance between nociceptive stimuli.

Publications

Poor judgment of distance between nociceptive stimuli.

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