Psychosomatic medicine
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Psychosomatic medicine · Apr 2008
Increased affective bias revealed using experimental graded heat stimuli in young depressed adults: evidence of "emotional allodynia".
To examine the hypothesis that young adults with major depressive disorder (MDD) would show increased affective bias to painful and nonpainful experimental heat stimuli, as evidenced by an increased responsiveness to warm and hot temperatures. Pain and depression often occur together. Pain is both a sensation and an affective experience. Similarly, depression is associated frequently with somatic symptoms as well as emotional dysphoria. Existing evidence indicates that MDD may be associated with altered pain processing. However, the extent to which alterations in experimentally controlled heat pain sensations are related to increased affective bias in MDD is unknown. ⋯ These findings represent corroborative evidence of abnormal affective heat pain processing in young adults with MDD, and suggest that MDD is associated with "emotional allodynia," a qualitatively altered negative emotional response to normally nonaversive thermal stimuli.