• Question: Is there any way, that you are aware of, to measure pain?

    Asked by bvbethington666 to Alexis, Dr D, Helen, Jasmine, Mario on 18 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Alexis Barr

      Alexis Barr answered on 18 Jun 2013:

      This is a very interesting question. Until very recently, the only way to measure pain was to ask someone to rank their pain on a scale of 1 to 10. However, earlier this year. scientists in America found that by using brain scans (MRI – Magnetic Resonance Imaging) they could actually see specific areas of the brain “lighting up” (becoming active) when people were subjected to pain. From this they could see how much pain a person was suffering.
      Another interesting point is that there are some people (very few) that experience no pain at all because of a mutation in the SCN9A gene. While this might sound good it’s actually very dangerous. Without feeling pain it’s very easy to bite or chew your tongue, or keep touching something very hot and burning your skin. Pain is actually very useful in keeping us alive.

    • Photo: Andrew Devitt

      Andrew Devitt answered on 18 Jun 2013:

      Pain is so difficult to assess and Alexis is right with her view.

      One of the most difficult things though is to assess pain in animals. This is what would worry me most about animal experiments. How can you be sure that you aren’t causing pain and distress in your experiments? Animals can’t tell you they are in pain (though you can guess for some animals by looking at their behaviour)

    • Photo: Jasmine Penny

      Jasmine Penny answered on 27 Jun 2013:

      Alexis is right. The traditional way of assessing pain is to rank it on a scale of 1 to 10 but researchers are looking at brain scans to see if pain can be detected this way. Scientists looked at what the brain did in response to applying heat (between 40 and 50 degrees celsius) to the arms of human volunteers. They found that certain parts of the brain were activated in response to the heat. They now want to look to see if the same parts of the brain respond to different types of pain, for example that caused by too much pressure. Another next step would be to look at people suffering from long-term (chronic) pain.

Comments