Pain
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Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical Trial
Cognitive coping and appraisal processes in the treatment of chronic headaches.
The purpose of the present study was to investigate the active cognitive ingredients of change in psychological treatments for long-term chronic headache complaints. The primary questions this study addressed were: (1) Is a cognitive self-hypnosis training which explicitly attempts to change appraisal and cognitive coping processes more effective in producing these changes than a relaxation procedure, and (2) are changes in pain appraisal and cognitive coping related to changes in pain and adjustment in the short and long term? A total of 144 patients were assigned at random to a cognitive self-hypnosis (CSH) treatment or autogenic training (AT) with a duration of 7 weeks. ⋯ Cognitive therapy was more effective than relaxation training in changing the use of cognitive coping strategies which were the direct targets of treatment. However, treatment effects were only related with changes in the use of coping strategies and appraisal processes to a limited extent and the mediational role of cognitive processes in pain reduction and better adjustment was inconclusive.
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Clinical Trial
Concerning the homology of painful experiences and pain descriptors: a multidimensional scaling analysis.
How is the sensory (or other) experience of pain related to the words used to describe such experiences? Answering this question would not only improve our general understanding of the relationship between the experience of pain and the report of pain, but also would allow one to quantify inaccuracies or idiosyncracies in this regard. A continuous multidimensional scaling model was used to examine the similarity between noxious electrocutaneous stimuli and the words used to describe them. If these two types of stimulus objects were homologous, one would expect that physical and verbal stimuli with the same meaning would be scaled with similar values along a single dimension; if not, the two types of stimuli would be scaled at opposite poles of a dimension which distinguished between them. ⋯ A single dimension in the group stimulus space scaled both physical and verbal stimulus objects from least to greatest intensity. Since this (or any higher) dimension failed to segregate verbal from physical stimuli, the words appear to be homologous with experience. While conclusions are limited to these specific stimuli, results suggest that the INDSCAL model offers a valuable method for exploring the relationship between pain report and pain experience.
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Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical Trial
A new method of recording somatosensory evoked potentials by randomized electrical tooth stimulation with 6 levels of intensity.
Dental somatosensory evoked potentials (SEPs) corresponding to the stimulus intensity levels were recorded at 6 different levels of intensity presented in a randomized order. The relationships between the amplitude of the late SEP component with latency between 150 and 300 msec and each stimulus intensity level were also compared in conditions of randomized intensity and constant intensity. The amplitude of the late component increased significantly with the increased stimulus intensity both in the randomized and constant intensity stimulation. ⋯ The latency of the late positive component significantly increased with the randomized stimulation with a 3-sec ISI. This phenomenon might be attributable to the psychological contamination. SEP recording in the randomized dental stimulation with a 1-sec ISI may have applications in neuropharmacological research or physiological research on pain and evaluation of the effects of analgesics, anesthetics, acupuncture and transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS).