Search research articles

ABOUT JoVE

Overview Leadership Blog JoVE Help Center

AUTHORS

Publishing Process Editorial Board Scope & Policies Peer Review FAQ Submit

LIBRARIANS

Testimonials Subscriptions Access Resources Library Advisory Board FAQ

RESEARCH

JoVE Journal Methods Collections JoVE Encyclopedia of Experiments Archive

EDUCATION

JoVE Core JoVE Business JoVE Science Education JoVE Lab Manual Faculty Resource Center Faculty Site

Terms & Conditions of Use

Related Concept Videos

Pain

Pain

Pain serves as a critical warning signal that alerts the body to potential or actual harm. When mechanical pressure on the skin is intense, such as from a sharp pinch, the sensation transitions from touch to pain. Similarly, extreme temperatures, like a hot pot handle, convert the sensation of heat into pain. Pain can also result from overstimulation of other senses, such as blinding light, loud noise, or the intense heat from habañero peppers. This ability to sense pain is essential for...

Nociception

Nociception

Nociception—the ability to feel pain—is essential for an organism’s survival and overall well-being. Noxious stimuli such as piercing pain from a sharp object, heat from an open flame, or contact with corrosive chemicals are first detected by sensory receptors, called nociceptors, located on nerve endings. Nociceptors express ion channels that convert noxious stimuli into electrical signals. When these signals reach the brain via sensory neurons, they are perceived as pain.

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by

Same author

Development and Validation of a Multidimensional Psychometric Scale for Assessing Pain Perception and Coping Strategies Among Adolescents.

Pain research & management·2026

Same author

Multidimensional psychosocial screening in routine cardiac care: preliminary findings from a cross-sectional survey.

Herz·2026

Same author

Pain, suffering, and the limits of conceptual unification: a comment on Sullivan and Williams.

Pain·2026

Same author

Individual threat-relevance accelerates belief-updating in conditioned hallucinations.

Scientific reports·2026

Same author

Symptom-Level Comorbidity of Fibromyalgia and Depression: A Network Approach within a Large Clinical Sample.

Psychotherapy and psychosomatics·2026

Same author

Blood DNA Methylation Patterns Across Carotid, Coronary, and Peripheral Atherosclerosis: A Comparative Analysis in 2 Prospective Cohorts.

Journal of the American College of Cardiology·2026

Same journal

Serum vitamin D level and its association with vertigo frequency and severity in Meniere disease.

Scientific reports·2026

Same journal

PFA-Net: a physics-informed feature enhancement and attention network for interpretable bearing fault diagnosis under strong noise.

Scientific reports·2026

Same journal

Circulating inflammatory, redox, and apoptosis-related alterations in drug-naive idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis: an exploratory case-control study.

Scientific reports·2026

Same journal

A baseline-oriented dynamic aggregation approach for demand-side heterogeneous controllable resources.

Scientific reports·2026

Same journal

Temporal precision and accuracy in schizophrenia: an exploratory study.

Scientific reports·2026

Same journal

Prefrontal EEG spectral and nonlinear signatures of subthreshold depression during resting state and affectively valenced picture/video viewing: a participant-level analysis.

Scientific reports·2026

See all related articles

Search research articles

Related Experiment Video

Updated: Aug 9, 2025

A Quantitative Sensory Testing Paradigm to Obtain Measures of Pain Processing in Patients Undergoing Breast Cancer Surgery

A Quantitative Sensory Testing Paradigm to Obtain Measures of Pain Processing in Patients Undergoing Breast Cancer Surgery

Published on: January 18, 2018

A novel computational approach to pain perception modelling within a Bayesian framework using quantitative sensory

Armin Drusko¹, David Baumeister¹, Megan McPhee Christensen²

¹Department of General Internal Medicine and Psychosomatics, University Hospital Heidelberg, Im Neuenheimer Feld 410, 69120, Heidelberg, Germany.

Scientific Reports

|February 24, 2023

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Researchers developed a new test to measure how prior expectations influence pain perception. This study found individual differences in relying on past beliefs versus current sensory input for pain, which could impact chronic pain development.

More Related Videos

Dynamic Quantitative Sensory Testing to Characterize Central Pain Processing

Dynamic Quantitative Sensory Testing to Characterize Central Pain Processing

Published on: February 16, 2017

Psychophysically-anchored, Robust Thresholding in Studying Pain-related Lateralization of Oscillatory Prestimulus Activity

Psychophysically-anchored, Robust Thresholding in Studying Pain-related Lateralization of Oscillatory Prestimulus Activity

Published on: January 21, 2017

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Aug 9, 2025

A Quantitative Sensory Testing Paradigm to Obtain Measures of Pain Processing in Patients Undergoing Breast Cancer Surgery

A Quantitative Sensory Testing Paradigm to Obtain Measures of Pain Processing in Patients Undergoing Breast Cancer Surgery

Published on: January 18, 2018

Dynamic Quantitative Sensory Testing to Characterize Central Pain Processing

Dynamic Quantitative Sensory Testing to Characterize Central Pain Processing

Published on: February 16, 2017

Psychophysically-anchored, Robust Thresholding in Studying Pain-related Lateralization of Oscillatory Prestimulus Activity

Psychophysically-anchored, Robust Thresholding in Studying Pain-related Lateralization of Oscillatory Prestimulus Activity

Published on: January 21, 2017

Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Psychology
Computational Modeling

Background:

Pain perception is an inferential process influenced by prior information.
Existing methods lack individual-level quantification of expectation's role in pain.

Purpose of the Study:

Develop and validate a quantitative sensory testing paradigm to measure individual differences in pain perception.
Investigate the influence of prior expectations versus current nociceptive input on pain perception.

Main Methods:

Utilized a Pavlovian-learning task with electrical cutaneous stimuli and visual cues in 70 healthy subjects.
Employed computational modeling with a Hierarchical Gaussian Filter (HGF) to assess belief in cue-pain associations.
Compared HGF prior weighting estimates with conditioned pain modulation (CPM) and temporal summation of pain (TSP).

Main Results:

70% of subjects relied more on current nociceptive input, while 30% weighted prior expectations higher.
No significant association found between prior weighting estimates and CPM or TSP.
Demonstrated substantial individual variability in prior weighting during pain perception.

Conclusions:

Individual differences in prior weighting highlight the importance of top-down cognitive processes in pain perception.
The developed paradigm can identify individuals with a higher reliance on expectations, a potential risk factor for chronic pain.
Findings suggest potential for tailored, learning-based interventions for chronic pain management.