While hanging up a picture, Joy hits her thumb with a hammer, causing agonizing pain. Joy immediately puffs out her cheeks and blows air onto her thumb over and over again. Her roommate Bethany laughs and then remarks, Are you drying nail polish or hoping to blow away the pain? However, Joys thumb does in fact feel better. Why?
a. She is simply buying time until the pain receptors enter a refractory period; blowing air onto the thumb plays only a psychological role.
b. She is hyper-stimulating the pain receptors in her skin, causing the sensation of pain to fade away quicker.
c. She is activating a competing sensory pathway, which dilutes the amount of pain information getting to the brain.
d. She is redirecting her attention toward a random behavior, which will activate areas of the cortex involved in higher order processing.
Question 2
Doug lost his left leg in an automobile accident several months ago. He tells his wife that when he was shaving his face one morning, he felt the same scraping sensation on his missing leg. What may account for Dougs phantom limb sensation?
a. reorganization of the somatosensory cortex
b. misappropriated top-down processing
c. spinal cord axons attempting to reinnervate the site of the injury
d. motor cortex redirecting its outputs
Numerical pain level chart with word modifiers.
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