Skip to main content
. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2020 Mar 6.
Published in final edited form as: Neuron. 2019 Mar 6;101(5):783–800. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2019.02.019

Figure 2b. How we currently ‘measure pain’ in humans:

Figure 2b.

This falls into the following broad categories: (i) self-reports using rating scales/descriptors/questionnaires to exogenous stimuli or any ongoing and spontaneous pain; (ii) observed measures of pain-like behavior; (iii) indirect measures of physiology/autonomic changes. (ii) currently is subjective and may suffer from cultural and social biases/influences as well as a lack of sensitivity and specificity but artificial intelligence/machine learning methods may remove the subjectivity and identify more sensitive components, (iii) are indirect assessments and make significant assumptions when relating these physiological measures to the underlying subjective state.