THE AUTONOMIC, SOMATIC AND CENTRAL NEURAL RESPONSES TO DEEP AND SUPERFICIAL PAIN IN HUMAN SUBJECTS

疼痛是一种主观体验，其强度很容易受到个人体验的影响。尽管如此，源于身体某一特定部位的疼痛通常会被所有人描述为具有相似的特征。例如，皮肤引起的疼痛通常被描述为尖锐或灼热，通常很容易定位，而肌肉引起的疼痛通常是迟钝、搏动和弥漫的。除了产生感觉变化外，疼痛还会引起血压、心率和运动活动的变化(通常是为了消除疼痛的根源)。这项拟议的研究旨在描述与源自皮肤和肌肉的疼痛相关的心血管和运动模式，并检查产生这些变化的大脑区域。更具体地说，微电极将被用于研究清醒的受试者在短暂疼痛的皮肤和肌肉事件期间周围神经活动的变化。在另一项单独的研究中，将使用功能磁共振成像来确定皮肤或肌肉疼痛激活的大脑部位。

Pain is a subjective experience, the intensity of which can be readily influenced by personal experience. Despite this, pain originating from a particular part of the body will usually be described by all individuals as having similar character. For example, pain arising from the skin is commonly described as being sharp or burning and is usually easy to localise, whereas pain arising from muscle is commonly dull, throbbing and diffuse. In addition to producing sensory changes, pain also evokes changes in blood pressure, heart rate and motor activity (often in an attempt to remove the source of the pain). The proposed research aims to characterise the cardiovascular and motor patterns associated with pain originating in skin and in muscle and to examine the brain regions that produce these changes. More specifically, microelectrodes will be used to investigate changes in peripheral nerve activity during transient painful skin and muscle events in awake human subjects. In a separate investigation functional magnetic resonance imaging will be used to determine brain sites that are activated by skin or muscle pain.