European journal of pain : EJP
-
People engaged in masochistic behaviour (MB) seek to experience pain and the pleasure it evokes in sadomasochistic (S&M) sessions. The sensitivity and attitude to pain in these individuals has hardly been tested. We evaluated pain perception among these individuals and tested whether their experiences and attitudes towards pain are context-related. ⋯ MB individuals exhibited pain hyposensitivity, presumably resulting from frequent engagement in MB. Alternatively, these subjects may have a predisposition which enables this engagement. Attitudes towards pain in MB individuals are complex. They appear to be context-related with pain experienced as pleasurable and rewarding during S&M sessions, and negative but still pleasurable in everyday life.
-
The ability to accurately recognize facial expressions of pain is known to affect clinical decision making and delivery of care. Although recognition accuracy for facial expressions of pain is well above chance level, substantial shortcomings have also been reported which stress the need to look for methods to improve recognition accuracy. Based on findings that pain is encoded in different facial activity patterns, we wanted to investigate whether training observers to recognize these various faces of pain might improve their ability to accurately recognize pain. ⋯ Raising awareness in observers that different combinations of facial movements (different faces of pain) are equivalent signals of pain through a brief training procedure can improve recognition accuracy for pain substantially.
-
To facilitate efficient screening and reduce the length of comprehensive self-report batteries, a four-item short form of the Pain Catastrophizing Scale (PCS) and a two-item short form of the Pain Self-Efficacy Questionnaire (PSEQ) have been developed and evaluated in samples of patients with arm and upper extremity pain. ⋯ The strongest short forms of the PCS and PSEQ could facilitate the assessment of pain catastrophizing and self-efficacy in situations in which the use of the longer original measures is not feasible.
-
Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder mainly marked by selective degeneration of dopaminergic neurons that leads to disabling motor and cognitive impairment. This condition is less widely appreciated as a disease associated with a substantial variety of pain syndromes, although the prevalence of pain is relatively high. Repeated painful stimulation of peripheral nerves can cause pain 'wind-up' if the frequency of the stimulation is adequate and specifically stimulates the afferent C-fibres. We presumed that in case of PD, pain or pain severeness might be frequently caused by the aggravation of the 'wind-up' phenomenon due to any central or peripheral lesions or functional alterations. ⋯ These differences may arise from the deficiency in the efferent information, as well as the alterations in the central processing. It is highly likely that both processes contribute to this phenomenon simultaneously.
-
Movement accuracy is ensured by interaction between motor, somatosensory, and visual systems. In complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS), this interaction is disturbed. To explore CRPS patients' visual perception of actions, we investigated how these patients evaluate the applied force in observed hand actions of another person. ⋯ We propose that the overestimation of force is explained both by the pain elicited by the observation and by the abnormal sensorimotor integration that is associated with perception of increased effort. This visually elicited unpleasantness and painfulness may promote avoidance of viewing own actions, further impairing the patients' motor performance.