The relationship between rectal pain, unpleasantness, and urge to defecate in normal subjects
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Rectal stimulation under normal or pathological conditions evokes numerous sensations. Previous studies have examined rectal stimulation-evoked pain and urge to defecate, but discrepancies in the findings remain because of the different methodologies used in each study and the reporting of sensations only at the end of or after the applied stimuli. Therefore, we conducted a psychophysical study of various aspects of rectal sensation in normal subjects using a variety of distension stimuli and continuous on-line rating of sensation. Ten normal healthy subjects (eight female and two male) were given rectal distension stimuli delivered by a computer-driven barostat. For some experiments, sensation was continuously monitored and rated on a visual analog scale. Subjects first underwent an ascending series of phasic (30 s) distensions to determine how urge, unpleasantness, and pain intensity varied and interrelated as rectal volume and pressure changed. A second series of distensions examined rectal physiology and perception during short phasic (30 s) or long (300 s) distensions at pressures that elicit either moderate urge or moderate pain and while continuously rating these sensations. The McGill Pain Questionnaire was used to assess the multidimensional aspects of rectal pain with each type of distension. The results of the ascending series revealed significant relationships between sensations as pressure and volume increased. The ratings of urge were double that of pain and unpleasantness, whereas unpleasantness and pain ratings were comparable. Isobaric phasic and tonic distensions were associated with an increase in volume (i.e. accommodation) with time. The magnitude of urge with repetitive short isobaric (30 s) distensions was overall not related to the slight increase in rectal volume, while phasic distensions at moderate pain intensity revealed a significant overall relationship between rectal volume and both unpleasantness and pain intensity. Long isobaric distensions evoked sensations that varied over time despite progressive increases in volume, but less variation in sensation was observed during short phasic distensions which also demonstrated a similar increase in rectal volume. Differences in temporal characteristics of sensations evoked by low-pressure distensions eliciting moderate urge versus high-pressure distensions eliciting moderate pain were illustrated by a significantly longer delay to the diminution of non-painful urge versus pain. Therefore, we conclude (1) Differences in the discrimination and the temporal characteristics of urge at subpainful rectal pressures and of pain at noxious pressures suggest that noxious and non-noxious stimuli are processed differently. (2) The overall unpleasantness and pain correlate with rectal volume during accommodation. However, instantaneous evoked sensations can vary independent of volume changes during constant pressure distension. (3) The reported sensation-related responses to tension and stretch will likely be different depending on the degree of accommodation that is occurring. Moreover, the peripheral receptor mechanisms which contribute to controlling this accommodation will also affect the perception of rectal stimuli. (4) Continuous ratings of rectal sensations are valuable in investigating rectal physiology and the multidimensional nature of rectal symptoms.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.009 | 0.009 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".