Chapter 6
The Challenge of Measuring Pain
in Humans
Marc W. Heft and Michael E. Robinson
Introduction
The International Association for the Study of Pain defines pain as“an unpleasant
sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage,
or described in terms of such damage”(IASP Taxonomy,http://www.iasp-pain.org/
Education/Content.aspx?ItemNumber=1698). Pain is a universal experience that
has profound impact on one’s ability to function. While we have all at various times
experienced pain of different types and locations—the dull pounding of a headache,
the sharpflashes of pain from a toothache when drinking cold water, or the ache of
a recently sprained ankle when walking—there is a common compelling nature to
these disparate events. In contrast to the other sensory systems such as audition and
taste where, for example, we can assess hearing acuity by having subjects rate the
loudness of tones of varying frequencies or taste by having subjects rate the
saltiness of varying concentrations of sodium chloride, clinical pain experiences
cannot be directly linked to specific stimuli. Furthermore, when clinical pain is
associated with tissue damage—an ankle sprain or a contusion—the pain complaint
is not necessarily directly linked to the severity of the insult.
We can measure attributes of pain experiences that provide insights as to the
impact and quality of the pain and factors that influence the onset and maintenance
of different clinical pain experiences. Thus, pain is not a unidimensional experience
that varies solely on how strong or weak it is but, rather, it is a multidimensional
experience that can be described in terms of sensory qualities, such as how strong or
M.W. Heft (&)
Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA
e-mail: [email protected]
M.E. Robinson
Department of Clinical and Health Psychology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA
e-mail: [email protected]
©Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016
L.L. Sievert and D.E. Brown (eds.),Biological Measures of Human
Experience across the Lifespan: Making Visible the Invisible,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-44103-0_6
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