Assignment: Potential Of Pain Perception

Assignment: Potential Of Pain Perception

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Considering the complexity of the world, it is tempting to think that the human senses are designed to take in information with as much accuracy as possible. However, the literature points to the fact that sometimes sensory systems actively distortinformation. For example, touch receptors stop signaling about the way clothes press against skin, or the visual system ignores blind spots in vision.  In some cases, the distortion of information is beneficial, allowing humans to ignore unimportant details.   Sometimes the distorted reports of sensory systems can be detrimental, as when an amputee suffers constant pain from a limb that is no longer there. To understand the mind, you have to understand how sensory systems report on the world. Important to this understanding is the distinction between sensation and perception.

Consider the crucial difference between sensation and perception and how context may affect the perception of pain.

With these thoughts in mind:

Describe of the most crucial differences between perception and sensation and explain why. Then, provide an example of how context may affect pain perception. Finally, explain two potential costs and two potential benefits of pain perception.

Pain is a distressing feeling often caused by intense or damaging stimuli. The International Association for the Study of Pain‘s widely used definition defines pain as “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage”.^[1] In medical diagnosis, pain is regarded as a symptom of an underlying condition.

Pain motivates the individual to withdraw from damaging situations, to protect a damaged body part while it heals, and to avoid similar experiences in the future.^[2] Most pain resolves once the noxious stimulus is removed and the body has healed, but it may persist despite removal of the stimulus and apparent healing of the body. Sometimes pain arises in the absence of any detectable stimulus, damage or disease.^[3]

Pain is the most common reason for physician consultation in most developed countries.^[4][5] It is a major symptom in many medical conditions, and can interfere with a person’s quality of life and general functioning.^[6] Simple pain medications are useful in 20% to 70% of cases.^[7] Psychological factors such as social support, hypnotic suggestion, excitement, or distraction can significantly affect pain’s intensity or unpleasantness.^[8] In some debates regarding physician-assisted suicide or euthanasia, pain has been used as an argument to permit people who are terminally ill to end their lives.^[9]