Channelopathies

Question 1

Pain definition

Answer 1

An unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in such damage

Question 2

What is pain?

Answer 2

A psychological state

Activity induced in the nociceptor and nociceptive pathways by a noxious stimulus is not pain even though we may appreciate that pain most often had a proximate physical cause

Question 3

Simple terms - what is pain?

Answer 3

Signal to alert organism to potentially injurious situations, both acute and chronic

Signal encodes both nature of painful stimulus and its location

Burning, stinging, itching, pricking, aching and a combination

Question 4

Types of pain

Answer 4

• Inflammatory
• cancer pain
• neuropathic
• visceral
• post-op
• migraine/headache
• cutaneous

Question 5

Nerves

Answer 5

Sensory neurones:
Afferent
Primary afferent

Question 6

Sensory pathways: transmission and processing of pain signals

Answer 6

1 - peripheral stimulation/sensitisation
2 - pain transduction & conduction
3 - pain transmission & processing
4 - pain perception/central sensitisation

Question 7

Ascending circuits of pain

Answer 7

Sensory neuron

Spinal cord