Focus on pain in the blind

Mancini, Flavia

doi:10.1016/j.pain.2013.06.029

Cited by 5 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…What the study indicated, however, was that the pain threshold decreased only for the injured rubber hand even though both the hairy and injured rubber hand equally evoked an unpleasant feeling. Looking at one's own body is considered to produce an analgesic effect through the psychological effect of eliminating uncertainty about danger as well as any anxiety associated with it, thereby preventing pain sensitivity from becoming stronger [48] . Moseley et al, for example, instructed the participating patients with complex regional pain syndrome suffering from significant swelling to see their affected hands through binoculars and reported that the patients experienced increased pain under the illusion that the swelling had worsened [17] .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Negative Body Image Associated with Changes in the Visual Body Appearance Increases Pain Perception

et al. 2014

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Changing the visual body appearance by use of as virtual reality system, funny mirror, or binocular glasses has been reported to be helpful in rehabilitation of pain. However, there are interindividual differences in the analgesic effect of changing the visual body image. We hypothesized that a negative body image associated with changing the visual body appearance causes interindividual differences in the analgesic effect although the relationship between the visual body appearance and analgesic effect has not been clarified. We investigated whether a negative body image associated with changes in the visual body appearance increased pain. Twenty-five healthy individuals participated in this study. To evoke a negative body image, we applied the method of rubber hand illusion. We created an “injured rubber hand” to evoke unpleasantness associated with pain, a “hairy rubber hand” to evoke unpleasantness associated with embarrassment, and a “twisted rubber hand” to evoke unpleasantness associated with deviation from the concept of normality. We also created a “normal rubber hand” as a control. The pain threshold was measured while the participant observed the rubber hand using a device that measured pain caused by thermal stimuli. Body ownership experiences were elicited by observation of the injured rubber hand and hairy rubber hand as well as the normal rubber hand. Participants felt more unpleasantness by observing the injured rubber hand and hairy rubber hand than the normal rubber hand and twisted rubber hand (p<0.001). The pain threshold was lower under the injured rubber hand condition than with the other conditions (p<0.001). We conclude that a negative body appearance associated with pain can increase pain sensitivity.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Negative Body Image Associated with Changes in the Visual Body Appearance Increases Pain Perception

et al. 2014

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“…Previous studies have shown that increased attention to threatening stimuli can be driven by augmented levels of anxiety [28] . One could therefore argue that the lack of vision may increase anxiety and consequently also attention towards nociceptive stimulation [1] , [48] . However, our psychometric data rule out this possibility, as all three groups were equally anxious about environmental threats.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pain Perception Is Increased in Congenital but Not Late Onset Blindness

et al. 2014

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There is now ample evidence that blind individuals outperform sighted individuals in various tasks involving the non-visual senses. In line with these results, we recently showed that visual deprivation from birth leads to an increased sensitivity to pain. As many studies have shown that congenitally and late blind individuals show differences in their degree of compensatory plasticity, we here address the question whether late blind individuals also show hypersensitivity to nociceptive stimulation. We therefore compared pain thresholds and responses to supra-threshold nociceptive stimuli in congenitally blind, late blind and normally sighted volunteers. Participants also filled in questionnaires measuring attention and anxiety towards pain in everyday life. Results show that late blind participants have pain thresholds and ratings of supra-threshold heat nociceptive stimuli similar to the normally sighted, whereas congenitally blind participants are hypersensitive to nociceptive thermal stimuli. Furthermore, results of the pain questionnaires did not allow to discriminate late blind from normal sighted participants, whereas congenitally blind individuals had a different pattern of responses. Taken together, these results suggest that enhanced sensitivity to pain following visual deprivation is likely due to neuroplastic changes related to the early loss of vision.

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“…Second, nociceptive hypersensitivity in early blind people could reflect an adaptive attitude to deal with pain. 39 The aforementioned studies indeed reported that congenitally blind people are more attentive to pain signals in daily life, and that uncertainty about an impending potentially painful stimulus could make them more anxious, which would consequently increase pain. 30,61 This hypothesis is in accordance with a recent study showing that nociceptive hypersensitivity in anophthalmic mice is associated with structural and Sponsorships or competing interests that may be relevant to content are disclosed at the end of this article.…”

Section: Early Visual Deprivation Increases Nociceptive Sensitivitymentioning

confidence: 97%

“…1), and also scientists. 2,[6][7][8]39,50,52,54,57,59 Blindness is defined as visual impairment presenting visual acuity worse than 3/60 (ie, categories 4-6 of the WHO) 77 ; neuroscience and psychology studies usually include only categories 5 (visual acuity worse than 1/6 with light perception) and 6 (no light perception). On the one hand, observing the behavior of a person who never had visual experience helps us to understand the role and importance of vision in acquiring knowledge about the world around us.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%