Rhudy Jamie L, Meagher Mary W
Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, University of Mississippi Medical Center, 2500 North State Street, Jackson, MS 39216, USA Department of Psychology, Texas A&M University, TAMU 4235, College Station, TX 77843-4235, USA.
Pain. 2003 Aug;104(3):617-626. doi: 10.1016/S0304-3959(03)00119-2.
Prior work indicates that exposure to fear-inducing shock inhibits finger-withdrawal to radiant heat in humans (hypoalgesia), whereas anxiety induced by threat of shock enhances reactivity (hyperalgesia; Pain 84 (2000) 65-75). Although finger-withdrawal latencies are thought to reflect changes in pain sensitivity, additional measures of pain are needed to determine whether pain perception is altered. The present study examined the impact of negative affect on visual analog scale (VAS) ratings of fixed duration thermal stimuli. One hundred twenty-seven male and female human subjects were randomly assigned to one of three emotion-induction conditions: (1) negative affect induced by exposure to three brief shocks; (2) negative affect elicited by the threat of shock without presentation; and (3) neutral affect, with no intervention. VAS ratings were tested before and after emotion-induction. Results suggest that both negative affect manipulations reduced pain. Manipulation checks indicated that the emotion-induction treatments induced similar levels of fear but with different arousal levels. Potential mechanisms for affect induced changes in pain are discussed.
先前的研究表明，暴露于引发恐惧的电击会抑制人类对辐射热的手指回缩反应（痛觉减退），而电击威胁引发的焦虑则会增强反应性（痛觉过敏；《疼痛》84卷（2000年）65 - 75页）。尽管手指回缩潜伏期被认为反映了疼痛敏感性的变化，但仍需要其他疼痛测量方法来确定痛觉是否发生了改变。本研究考察了消极情绪对固定持续时间热刺激的视觉模拟量表（VAS）评分的影响。127名男性和女性人类受试者被随机分配到三种情绪诱导条件之一：（1）暴露于三次短暂电击所引发的消极情绪；（2）未进行电击但电击威胁引发的消极情绪；（3）无干预的中性情绪。在情绪诱导前后对VAS评分进行了测试。结果表明，两种消极情绪操纵均降低了疼痛程度。操纵检查表明，情绪诱导处理引发了相似程度的恐惧，但唤醒水平不同。文中讨论了情绪诱导导致疼痛变化的潜在机制。
