Department of Neurology, University Medical Center of Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, Germany.
Eur J Pain. 2012 Oct;16(9):1281-92. doi: 10.1002/j.1532-2149.2012.00133.x. Epub 2012 Mar 9.
Habituation and sensitization are important behavioural responses to repeated exposure to painful stimuli, but little is known about the factors determining sensory, affective and sympathetic habituation to repeated pain stimulation in men and women.
Thirty volunteers (15 women) underwent a standardized heat pain paradigm spread over 8 consecutive days. At the beginning of the experiment, personality dimensions, coping strategies and pain catastrophizing thoughts were determined. Receiving a series of 10 blocks of six painful heat stimuli a day, participants rated pain intensity and unpleasantness. Skin conductance was recorded throughout the sessions.
The results show similar habituation of both the sensory and affective dimensions of pain in men and women, although skin conductance did not undergo a significant decrease across the eight days. When focusing on single daily sessions, women showed pain sensitization but sympathetic habituation, while men showed pain sensitization but stable sympathetic activation. Our findings therefore indicate that the process of long-term habituation to painful heat stimuli is a common feature in both genders, whereas men and women might differently recruit their sympathetic nervous system for short-term pain processing. This study could potentially help to better evaluate gender-specific mechanisms in pain perception.
习惯化和敏感化是对重复的疼痛刺激的重要行为反应，但对于男性和女性对重复疼痛刺激的感觉、情感和交感神经习惯化的决定因素知之甚少。
30 名志愿者（15 名女性）接受了 8 天连续的标准化热痛范式。在实验开始时，确定了人格维度、应对策略和疼痛灾难化思维。参与者每天接受 10 个 6 次疼痛热刺激的系列，对疼痛强度和不愉快程度进行评分。整个过程中记录皮肤电导。
结果表明，男性和女性的疼痛感觉和情感维度都有相似的习惯化，尽管皮肤电导在 8 天内没有显著下降。当关注单个日常疗程时，女性表现出疼痛敏感化但交感神经习惯化，而男性则表现出疼痛敏感化但稳定的交感神经激活。因此，我们的研究结果表明，长期适应疼痛热刺激的过程是两性共同的特征，而男性和女性可能会以不同的方式招募他们的交感神经系统来进行短期的疼痛处理。这项研究有可能有助于更好地评估疼痛感知中的性别特异性机制。
