Pain endurance in unilateral cerebral lesions.

The purpose of the present experiment was to study whether a unilateral cerebral lesion modifies pain parameters with respect to a control group. Electric stimuli were applied to brain damaged patients on the forearm ipsilateral to the lesion, and to both forearms of a control group. No significant difference was found between experimental groups for either pain or tolerance thresholds, whereas pain endurance--the difference between pain threshold and pain tolerance threshold--was significantly greater in right brain damaged patients, compared to both the control group and the left brain damaged group. In the latter group, pain endurance was not significantly different from controls, although there was a tendency towards its decrease. Result are discussed in relation to the problem of the hemispheric specialization for emotional processes.