Pain hypersensitivity in congenital blindness is associated with faster central processing of C‐fibre input
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: We have recently shown that visual deprivation from birth exacerbates responses to painful thermal stimuli. However, the mechanisms underlying pain hypersensitivity in congenital blindness are unclear. METHODS: To study the contribution of Aδ- and C-fibres in pain perception, we measured thresholds and response times to selective C- and Aδ-fibre activation in congenitally blind, late blind and normally sighted participants. Ultrafast constant-temperature heat pulses were delivered to the hand with a CO2 laser using an interleaved adaptive double staircase procedure. Participants were instructed to respond as quickly as possible when detecting a laser-induced sensation. We used a 650 ms cut-off criterion to distinguish fast Aδ- from slow C-fibre-mediated sensations. RESULTS: Congenitally blind participants showed significantly faster reaction times to C- but not to Aδ-fibre-mediated sensations. In contrast, thresholds for Aδ- and C-fibre stimulation did not differ between groups. Late blind individuals did not differ from sighted controls in any aspect. A follow-up experiment using only suprathreshold stimuli for Aδ- and C-fibre activation confirmed these findings and further showed that congenitally blind individuals detected significantly more C-fibre-mediated stimuli than sighted controls. A decomposition analysis of the reaction times indicated that the faster response times in the congenitally blind are due to more efficient central processing of C-fibre-mediated sensations. CONCLUSION: The increased sensitivity to painful thermal stimulation in congenital blindness may be due to more efficient central processing of C-fibre-mediated input, which may help to avoid impending dangerous encounters with stimuli that threaten the bodily integrity. WHAT DOES THIS STUDY ADD?: Hypersensitivity to heat pain in congenital blindness is associated with faster responses to C-fibre activation, likely caused by more efficient central processing of C-fibre-mediated input.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 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 source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), 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".