0000000000009347
AUTHOR
S. Kritzmann
Stress and thermoregulation: different sympathetic responses and different effects on experimental pain.
Stress and thermoregulation both activate the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) but might differently affect pain. Studies investigating possible interactions in patients are problematic because of the high prevalence of SNS disturbances in patients. We therefore analyzed the influence of these different sympathetic challenges on experimentally-induced pain in healthy subjects. SNS was activated in two different ways: by mental stress (Stroop task, mental arithmetic task), and by thermoregulatory stimulation using a water-perfused thermal suit (7 degrees C, 32 degrees C, or 50 degrees C). Attentional effects of the mental stress tasks were controlled by using easy control tasks. Both, stress…
Naloxone inhibits not only stress-induced analgesia but also sympathetic activation and baroreceptor-reflex sensitivity
Interactions between the sympathetic nervous system and pain are manifold and still have not been sufficiently characterized. Accordingly, several possible neuronal pathways have been described as being involved in mental stress-induced analgesia. We studied the role of the endogenous opioidergic system in stress-induced analgesia in 14 healthy participants in a double-blind cross-over trial. Naloxone or placebo was applied while electrical pain stimulation was started and electrical current increased. After reaching a constant stimulation at 30 mA, a color word interference test (Stroop task) was performed in a stressful and a non-stressful version. Blood pressure, heart rate and barorefle…
Patterns of sympathetic responses induced by different stress tasks.
Stress tasks are used to induce sympathetic nervous system (SNS) arousal. However, the efficacy and the patterns of SNS activation have not been systematically compared between different tasks. Therefore, we analyzed SNS activation during the following stress tasks: Presentation of negative, positive, and – as a control – neutral affective pictures, Color-Word interference test (CWT), mental arithmetic under time limit, singing a song aloud, and giving a spontaneous talk. We examined 11 healthy subjects and recorded the following SNS parameters: Activation of emotional sweating by quantitative sudometry, skin vasoconstriction by laser-Doppler flowmetry, heart rate by ECG, blood pressure by …