Individual differences in pain thresholds.

Clark, James W.; Bindra, Dalbir

doi:10.1037/h0083660

Cited by 66 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 13 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…One resolution is to argue that the signal detection analysis offers the most accurate picture of the threshold process (see Green & Swets, 1966;Massaro, 1975;Swets, 1961) and that the sequential model is likely to be wrong. This conclusion would also be consistent with earlier data showing that the same factors affect emotional reactions at both pain and tolerance thresholds (Clark & Bindra, 1956). A second resolution would be to argue that the procedures used in the signal detection experiment, which presents a large number of stimuli in series and asks the subject to focus on the sensory components rather than seeing how much pain he can tolerate, cause an artificial separation of sensation and emotion, and that under real-life conditions involving clinical pain, sensation and emotional reaction components are integral and correlated (Garner, 1974).…”

supporting

confidence: 92%

Emotion, Pain, and Physical Illness

Leventhal

Everhart

1979

Emotions in Personality and Psychopathology

127

105

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

9Leventhal and Everhart make it quite clear that pain and the emotions associated with it playa significant part in the development and well-being of the physical and social self. Their emphasis is on the contribution of emotions to the subjective experience of pain, and the explanatory model that has been developed by Leventhal and his colleagues pushes back the frontier of research on pain and pain-emotion-cognition interactions.Leventhal and Everhart provide a critical review of two earlier models of pain. They show that the sensory model, which defines pain as a sensory experience resulting from particular types and intensities of physical energy, has led to a number of false but commonly held assumptions about the sources and meanings of pain. They note, for example, that this model falsely predicts that injury always leads to pain and that the magnitude of the injury is directly related to the magnitude of the pain.They describe the sequential components model in terms of the formula, pain = sensation + emotion. In this framework, the emotion, typically fear, is somehow added to the sensory information resulting from the injury. Investigators following this model recognize the power of emotion in influencing subjective experience and hence they emphasize the treatment of the emotion component as a method of alleviating the pain. Leventhal and Everhart discuss the question of the relative contribution of the sensory data from tissue injury and the emotion component and find the sequential components model inadequate for resolving this issue. In order to resolve the problems inherent in the earlier theories of pain, the authors propose a parallel processing model in which the sensoryinformational data from tissue damage are processed simultaneously or in parallel with the emotional component. The end result of this parallel processing of data from the pain and emotion systems is a pain-distress (or pain-emotion) experience in which there is integration of the sensory information about the noxious stimulus with emotion responses. According to this model, one 262Editor's Introduction neural pathway handles the sensory data from the noxious stimulus or injury and provides information about the location, duration, intensity, and other attributes of the stimulus. The second pathway generates the emotion experience, and the integration of the data from the two pathways produces pain-distress or the pain-emotion experience. The interaction of the two components takes place very early in the signal conduction sequence, but the interaction may be inhibited or altered by attentional processes.The integration of the sensory data of tissue damage (pain information) with emotion requires what the authors term "schematic processing." Through experience, each individual develops affective-cognitive structures or schemata that represent the informational and pain-emotion aspects of earlier experiences. What we experience in a given noxious stimulus-situation is determined in part by the schema we have for that situation. Th...

show abstract

supporting

confidence: 92%

Emotion, Pain, and Physical Illness

Leventhal

Everhart

1979

Emotions in Personality and Psychopathology

127

105

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The rationale of the present experiment is based upon a determination of psychological and psychophysical rules in subjects who differ in the degree to which they report the same shock intensities as eliciting pain. Variation between people in such measures as pain threshold (the stimulus magnitude for which a subject first reports feeling pain) and tolerance (the most extreme stimulus magnitude that the subject is willing or able to experience)is typically quite high (seeClark & Bindra, 1956;Clausen & King, 1950;Dillon, 1968;Notermans & Tophof, 1967; …”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Functional measurement scales of painful electric shocks

Jones

Gwynn

1984

Perception & Psychophysics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Subjects were required to rate the combined intensities of two factorially paired shocks ranging in intensity from 1 mA through 2, 3, 4, and 5 mAo In Experiment I, an anchored 1-20-point rating scale was used, and in Experiment 2, one of two scales, 1-15 points or 1-25 points, was provided to the subject. Data from all three conditions were fit by a weighted average model, j = WSj + (l -w)Sj, where It;js are mean ratings, Sj and Sj are scale values of the first and second shocks, and w is a weight parameter. The derived psychophysical functions were linear in all three cases, and the slope increases with the number of available categories, in conformity to range-frequency theory. In a third experiment, subjects were divided according to the ratings they gave of pain elicited by the 5-mA shock. The weighted averaging model provided an appropriate integration model for both higher and lower pain raters. Higher raters tended to accord an equal weight to both shocks, whereas lower raters accorded greater weight to the second stimulus. Implications for research on analgesic procedures are discussed.

show abstract

“…In 1934, Libman (4) reported that pressure applied to the mastoid bone in the direction of the styloid process produces ''marked'' pain in 60-70% of his human patients, but no or little pain in 30-40%. Subsequent investigations over the next few decades with more quantitative methodology confirmed the presence of large individual differences in threshold sensitivity and tolerance to noxious pressure (5)(6)(7)(8), heat (7,9,10), and electrical current (7,11) applied to cutaneous tissues, and tolerance to visceral (6) and deep muscle (9,10) pain. Impressive individual differences in sensitivity to opioid analgesics were also documented during this period, typified by Lasagna and Beecher (12) observing a ''success rate'' of only 65% of the standard clinical dose of morphine, 10 mg (see also ref.…”

Section: The Scope Of Individual Variability To Pain and Analgesiamentioning

confidence: 99%

The genetic mediation of individual differences in sensitivity to pain and its inhibition

Mogil

1999

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

384

220

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The underlying bases of the considerable interindividual variability in pain-related traits are starting to be revealed. Although the relative importance of genes versus experience in human pain perception remains unclear, rodent populations display large and heritable differences in both nociceptive and analgesic sensitivity. The identification and characterization of particularly divergent populations provides a powerful initial step in the genetic analysis of pain, because these models can be exploited to identify genes contributing to the behavior-level variability. Ultimately, DNA sequence differences representing the differential alleles at pain-relevant genes can be identified. Thus, by using a combination of ''top-down'' and ''bottom-up'' strategies, we are now able to genetically dissect even complex biological traits like pain. The present review summarizes the current progress toward these ends in both humans and rodents.

show abstract

Individual differences in pain thresholds.

Cited by 66 publications

References 13 publications

Emotion, Pain, and Physical Illness

Emotion, Pain, and Physical Illness

Functional measurement scales of painful electric shocks

The genetic mediation of individual differences in sensitivity to pain and its inhibition

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About