Sensory and affective dimensions of phasic pain are indistinguishable in the self-report and psychophysiology of normal laboratory subjects

Abstract

This study evaluated the discriminant validity of subjects differentially scaling the sensory and affective dimensions of pain. It sought to determine (1) whether subjects can differentially scale sensory and affective aspects of phasic laboratory pain in the absence of task demand bias that fosters apparent differential scaling; (2) whether psychophysiologic responses to painful stimuli can predict pain report (PR); and (3) whether such responses contribute more to affective than to sensory judgments. Fifty-six men and 44 women repeatedly experienced varied painful electrical fingertip stimuli at low, medium, and high intensities. On half of the trial blocks, subjects made sensory judgments; on the remainder they made affective judgments. Response measures included PR, pupil dilation, heart rate, respiration rate, skin conductance response (SCR), and late near field evoked potentials. Subjects did not rate the stimuli differently when making sensory versus affective judgments. The psychophysiologic variables, principally the SCR, accounted for 44% of the variance in the PR. Psychophysiologic response patterns did not differentiate affective and sensory judgment conditions. Noteworthy sources of individual differences included baseline PR levels and the linear effects of SCR on PR.