According to a recent study, the pain signals in the body travel just as fast as the touch signals. The pain signaling systems in monkeys and other mammals can conduct nerve signals just as fast as the system that signals touch. The scientists speculated whether such a system is also present in humans, reported the study published in the Journal of Science Advances.
“The ability to feel pain is vital to our survival, so why should our pain-signaling system be so much slower than the system used for touch, and so much slower than it could be?” asked Saad Nagi, principal research engineer.
“When we activated an individual nerve cell, it caused a perception of pain, so we conclude that these nerve cells are connected to pain centers in the brain,” said Saad Nagi.
The research team also investigated patients with various rare neurological conditions. One group of people had, as adults, acquired nerve damage that led to the thickly myelinated nerve fibres being destroyed, while the small fibres were spared. These patients cannot detect light touch.
The scientists predicted that the loss of myelinated nerve fibres should also affect the rapidly conducting pain system they had identified. It turned out that these people had an impaired ability to experience mechanical pain.
Examination of patients with two other rare neurological conditions gave similar results. These results may be highly significant for pain research, and for the diagnosis and care of patients with pain.
“It’s becoming evident that thickly myelinated nerve fibres contribute to the experience of pain when it has a mechanical cause. Our results challenge the textbook description of a rapid system for signalling touch and a slower system for signalling pain. We suggest that pain can be signalled just as rapidly as touch,” said Saad Nagi.
