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posted by CoolHand on Monday January 21 2019, @04:23PM   Printer-friendly
from the gender-inequality dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Men's pain tolerance decreases when exposed to a setting where they've previously had a painful experience.

A painful experience is not one you are likely to forget—you don't need to a trunk slammed onto your finger multiple times to realize that it's a situation you'd like to avoid. According to a study published Thursday (January 10) in Current Biology, one painful ordeal in a particular setting is enough to make pain less tolerable in that same place in the future—but only if you're male. 

A growing body of evidence suggests a close link between pain and memory. For example, scientists have found that the molecular mechanisms underlying the two processes in the neurons of the spinal cord and brain share striking similarities. And in rodents, scientists have used drugs that manipulate memory-like processes in the spinal cord to reduce persistent pain. "The idea that chronic pain is an issue of memory is increasingly gaining traction," says Jeffrey Mogil, a neuroscientist at McGill University and a coauthor of the new study.  

[...] The reason for the absence of Pavlovian pain memory might be study design, rather than biology. Mogil and his colleagues now developed an experiment that demonstrated this effect, although they stumbled on it by accident. While working on another study looking at the social effects of pain, they discovered that injecting a diluted solution of acetic acid into the bellies of mice—a procedure that causes temporary stomach pain—immediately increased their sensitivity to thermal pain. Twenty-four hours later, the effect remained. 

This finding made Mogil and his team wonder whether that the hypersensitivity was due to classical conditioning. To test this theory, they tried placing mice in a different room a day after the acetic acid injection and discovered that the pain hypersensitivity did not occur.

[...] To see whether humans had the same experience, the team recruited 79 people and repeated the experiments using the so-called ischemic tourniquet test, in which a blood pressure cuff is squeezed tightly around a participant's arm and the resultant loss of blood supply causes pain. (This procedure is safe, but according to Mogil, "it hurts like hell.") Again, they found that just the men showed a heighted response to heat pain the next day—and only in the room where they previously took part in the agonizing task. In a different room, men's tolerance for heat pain remained unchanged after the tourniquet test. Women rated heat pain similarly on both testing days, and in both locations.

Closer examinations revealed that, at least in mice, the context-dependent pain hypersensitivity was dependent on testosterone. The pain memories disappeared in castrated male rodents, and it emerged in ovariectomized female animals infused with testosterone. 

[...] Anne Murphy, a neuroscientist at Georgia State University who did not take part in the work, says she was surprised that the researchers only found this effect in males. "I would really like to see this in a clinically relevant situation," Murphy adds. "For example, if you know you're going into repeated surgery, is the pain experienced by the second surgery more intense than the first one?" 

Several important questions remain, such as what effect the testosterone is having on the pain-related stressfor now, the study has only shown that both testosterone and stress response are required to produce pain memories. But for Mogil, the most important takeaway from this study is that these findings "reinforce the fact that sex differences are important in pain, and females deserve to be studied," he says. "The field has completely ignored the study of females for decades, and only now are people starting to switch."

Source: https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/men-react-to-repeated-painful-experiences-differently-than-women-do-65320


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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by stretch611 on Monday January 21 2019, @04:44PM (4 children)

    by stretch611 (6199) on Monday January 21 2019, @04:44PM (#789645)

    This is probably why men wince every single time that they see another man get whacked in the family jewels.

    --
    Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 21 2019, @05:41PM (3 children)

      by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Monday January 21 2019, @05:41PM (#789669) Homepage Journal

      Quite likely. It's also quite possibly an evolved survival trait given that an aversion to repeated pain is a good thing if you're doing potentially dangerous tasks (since it incentivizes you to figure out ways to avoid pain and thus injury in the future) but highly undesirable in people who have to go through the pain of childbirth.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 21 2019, @08:52PM (2 children)

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 21 2019, @08:52PM (#789762) Journal
        It's possible too that reinjury is worse than injury so there might be evolutionary advantages to behavioral quirks that enccourage you to not get injured in the same place twice.

        but highly undesirable in people who have to go through the pain of childbirth.

        Some sort of forgetfulness has to be happening with that all the way to "starting their own families".

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 22 2019, @12:13PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 22 2019, @12:13PM (#790039)

          Some sort of forgetfulness has to be happening with that all the way to "starting their own families".

          And social pressure, ignorance, and sunk cost fallacies. If people were educated about all the actual risks of pregnancy, childbirth (many causing permanent damage), and even raising children, I think fewer people would have children.

        • (Score: 2) by wisnoskij on Tuesday January 22 2019, @05:56PM

          by wisnoskij (5149) <{jonathonwisnoski} {at} {gmail.com}> on Tuesday January 22 2019, @05:56PM (#790169)

          This result they area talking about is different types of pain in the same room. Injury to the knee or childbirth is complexly outside the results of these studies. These results talk about how I rope burned my hand getting water from the well yesterday, so now the rough stones hurt butt as I sit on the well.

  • (Score: 4, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Monday January 21 2019, @07:00PM (3 children)

    by DeathMonkey (1380) on Monday January 21 2019, @07:00PM (#789694) Journal

    Men React to Repeated Painful Experiences Differently Than Women Do

    Correct, most women wouldn't continue to read SoylentNews.

    • (Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Monday January 21 2019, @07:10PM (2 children)

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 21 2019, @07:10PM (#789705) Journal

      Do more men than women switch from Windows to Linux?

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
      • (Score: 2) by stretch611 on Monday January 21 2019, @10:54PM (1 child)

        by stretch611 (6199) on Monday January 21 2019, @10:54PM (#789835)

        Nothing painful about that...

        The real pain is staying with windows with microsoft slurping all your personal data and just surfing the internet is all that is needed to get a virus.

        --
        Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
        • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday January 22 2019, @08:42PM

          by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 22 2019, @08:42PM (#790278) Journal

          Exactly the point. Men react more to the pain of Windows, or even the potential pain, and are more likely to avoid the pain by switching to Linux.

          --
          People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @07:47PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @07:47PM (#789733)

    Without this difference no woman would have a second child.

  • (Score: 1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @08:45PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @08:45PM (#789758)

    I can't believe in this day and age we could have such a transphobic patriarchal intolerant article. Women and men are the exact same in every way and its all about how you feel. Did they judge the "men" and "women" based on their gentic sex or their identified gender? If so, why didn't they look at gender.

    • (Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Monday January 21 2019, @09:09PM

      by kurenai.tsubasa (5227) on Monday January 21 2019, @09:09PM (#789778) Journal

      From TFS:

      Closer examinations revealed that, at least in mice, the context-dependent pain hypersensitivity was dependent on testosterone. The pain memories disappeared in castrated male rodents, and it emerged in ovariectomized female animals infused with testosterone.

      Just keep taking your HRT as usual and you too can enjoy the pain response of your identified gender. Huzzah!

      I'm going to state without going into icky details that I have reason to believe that this is not a permanent androgenization effect (such as vocal resonance) and is completely dependent on level of testosterone in the blood. (Normal female range is 50 ng/ml iirc, normal male range is 750 ng/ml iirc. In both sexes/all genders/whatever, low testosterone can cause loss of sex drive.)

      Any other questions?

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @10:38PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @10:38PM (#789825)

    Such as "can anyone replicate this?"

    The people who write these university press releases and the "journalists" who report on them are worse for science than any church or flat earth society could ever be.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 22 2019, @09:50AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 22 2019, @09:50AM (#790005)

      Well you first have to publish a study so other can try and replicate it. Science is self-correcting, unlike religions (= a cult with a lot of followers).

      • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 22 2019, @09:59AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 22 2019, @09:59AM (#790008)

        No, you don't. The study design can be known before the study is done and can be published (except in the case of a pilot study). The replication can then be funded in parallel.

        Science may be self-correcting, but science involves independent replications and deriving/testing meaningful predictions. Doesn't look like this type of research (endlessly performing pilot studies and skipping the hard parts) meets the criteria of science.

  • (Score: 2) by ewk on Tuesday January 22 2019, @08:46AM

    by ewk (5923) on Tuesday January 22 2019, @08:46AM (#789995)

    "and females deserve to be studied"

    making a livelong task of this already (and still not getting anywhere near a conclusive result). :-D

    --
    I don't always react, but when I do, I do it on SoylentNews
  • (Score: 2) by wisnoskij on Tuesday January 22 2019, @05:53PM

    by wisnoskij (5149) <{jonathonwisnoski} {at} {gmail.com}> on Tuesday January 22 2019, @05:53PM (#790167)

    This would be a far more narrow result then this summery is implying.
    People gain quite a bit of pain tolerance with pain they are experience with. Sure, when the men are in a heightened state of awareness due to remembered pain, they feel more. But if it was a type they had experienced before it would be orders of magnitude less. If they tested them with the same type of pain, it would be 1/4 as painful as the first time.

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