The impact of non-noxious heat on tactile information processing

A significant number of studies that evaluated tactile-pain interactions employed heat to evoke nociceptive responses. However, relatively few studies have examined the effects of non-noxious thermal stimulation on tactile discriminative capacity. In this study, the impact that non-noxious heat had on three features of tactile information processing capacity was evaluated: vibrotactile threshold, amplitude discriminative capacity, and adaptation. It was found that warming the skin made a significant improvement on a subject's ability to detect a vibrotactile stimulus, and although the subjects' capacities for discriminating between two amplitudes of vibrotactile stimulation did not change with skin heating, the impact that adapting or conditioning stimulation normally had on amplitude discrimination capacity was significantly attenuated by the change in temperature. These results suggested that although the improvements in tactile sensitivity that were observed could have been a result of enhanced peripheral activity, the changes in measures that reflect a decrease in the sensitization to repetitive stimulation are most likely centrally mediated. The authors speculate that these centrally mediated changes could be a reflection of a change in the balance of cortical excitation and inhibition.