Reading 2 (Group 2) Flashcards
What kind of experience is pain? What does it make us seek? Where does it make us go?
an unpleasant subjective experience
Ways to avoid it
It is also one of the main reasons people go to see a doctor.
What is one of the main functions of pain?
to tell us when something that’s going on in our body presents a potential or present danger to our physical well-being.
Is it the case that that sensations of pain are simply due to excessive stimulation of the same receptors that give us other information about the state of our bodies and the state of the world?
No.
Is alerting the brain to the dangers that a painful stimulus represents is different or similar from informing it of the presence of an innocuous tactile stimulus?
quite different
Does the perception of pain rely on the same receptors and pathways of other stimuli? What do they specialize in?
The perception of pain, or nociception, depends on pain-specific receptors and pain- specific neural pathways.
These receptors and pathways detect conditions that are potentially harmful to our bodies and arouse in us the particular conscious sensation that we call pain.
Are nociception and pain the same thing?
no. they are 2 different things
What is nociception?
Nociception is the sensory process that produces the nerve signals that trigger pain.
What is pain?
Pain itself is an aching subjective sensation linked to a specific part of the body.
Can nociception and pain can occur in absence of each other? Examples?
In some cases.
sometimes an individual’snociceptors may be highly activated without any experience of pain—think of the times that you have cut yourself without even realizing it, because you were so focused on whatever task you were doing. Similarly, people can be severely injured but feel no pain, because of intense stress or emotions that they are experiencing at the same time. Conversely, people can also experience very intense pain without any major activation of their nociceptors (the mysterious phenomenon known as neuropathic pain).
What is neuropathic pain?
people can also experience very intense pain without any major activation of their nociceptors (the mysterious phenomenon known as neuropathic pain).
Is pain always directly proportional to the seriousness of an injury or illness? Example?
NO.
Some cancers cause very little pain until they reach an advanced stage, while other, relatively benign problems such as kidney stones can be extremely painful.
Does pain have a highly formalized definition?
Because pain is such a complex, subjective phenomenon, it escapes any highly formalized definition
What is The International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP)’s definition of pain? Is this specific? What does it tend to be similar to?
an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage
this is a very vague description.
tends to be similar to pain is “anything identified as such by the patient”.
What are the 2 components of pain?
sensory and emotional
What is the sensory component of pain?
The sensory componentis one that pain shares with the other, conventional sensory modalities (vision, hearing, touch, taste, and smell). It is the discriminative component that enables any sensory modality to identify the location and intensity of a stimulus.
What cortexes does the sensory component of pain involve?
In the case of pain, this component involves the primary and secondary cortexes.
What is the emotional component of pain? What are some other names for it? What brain structures does it involve?
The other component of pain, variably described as emotional, affective, or motivational, involves the anterior cingulate cortex and the insula. It is this component that makes us subjectively experience discomfort and that drives us to do something to make it stop, or to reduce it, or to flee from it.
Is pain valuable?
yes.
What are some risks for people with congenital analgesia?
They live with the constant risk of getting themselves killed because they never realize when they are hurting themselves. They generally die fairly young. When these children do survive, they often suffer injuries to their mouth (because they bite their tongue without feeling it) or to their eyes (because they fail to remove foreign particles soon enough). They also commonly experience problems with their joints, as well as multiple broken bones. Even during sleep, the lack of nociception can lead to injuries caused by staying in uncomfortable positions for too long.
What terms do we use to refer to rare individuals who are born with a total inability to experience pain?
these people are said to have congenital insensitivity to pain or congenital analgesia
What are 2 possible explanations for congenital analgesia?
Some people with this condition appear to have excessively high levels of endorphins. The administration of endorphin-blocking substances reduces the intensity of the stimulus needed for such individuals to experience pain. Other people with this condition seem to have a problem with their nociceptive sensory fibers, as well as with the corresponding peripheral nociceptors.
What are three factors influencing the perception of pain?
cultural factors
cognitive or psychological factors
meaning
Why do our subjective experiences of pain vary so greatly?
The reason that our subjective experience of pain varies so greatly is that so many different sets of factors that influence the way we perceive it.
How can cultural factors influence the perception of pain? Example.
if people have philosophical or religious beliefs that pain represents a test, a punishment, a necessary evil, or something unavoidable, those beliefs will definitely affect the way that those people experience pain. Thus, people who are raised in families or cultures where they are taught to endure pain stoically will show less discomfort than people who focus their attention on their pain.
How can the subjective perception of pain be influenced by cognitive or psychological factors? What are some of these factors?
Some of these factors, such as stress and depression, increase our perception of pain, while others, such as a calm, optimistic attitude, decrease it.
