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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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