BACKGROUND Noninvasive measurements of myocardial blood flow (MBF) with PET revealed an abnormal coronary vasomotor response to cold pressor test in healthy long-term smokers. If coronary endothelial dysfunction accounted for this abnormality, we hypothesized that it could be reversed by L-arginine as the substrate for NO synthase. METHODS AND RESULTS MBF was quantified with 13N-labeled ammon...

Although laboratory stressor tests have been applied as a preliminary protocol in some cardiovascular studies, there is a lack of data comparing the pressor and chronotropic responses among the main stressor tests. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate the variability in hemodynamic responsiveness to the main stressor tests, establish a hyperresponsiveness cutoff criterion and analyz...

In Study 1, the Pain Catastrophizing Scale (PCS) was administered to 425 undergraduates. Analyses yielded a three component solution comprising (a) rumination, (b) magnification, and (c) helplessness. In Study 2, 30 undergraduate participants were classified as catastrophizers (n = 15) or noncatastrophizers (n = 15) on the basis of their PCS scores and participated in an cold pressor procedure....

Pain experience in sport had been the subject of increasing research in recent years. While sports professionals have generally been found to have higher pain thresholds than control subjects the reasons for this are not entirely clear. The present study seeks to investigate one possible explanatory factor, the importance of the popular image of the physical activity and of the self-image of it...

Anxiety sensitivity, a trait characterised by fear of anxiety-related body sensations, has been linked to heightened attention to pain, appraising body sensations as threatening, and remembering threat-related information. We assessed whether individuals with greater anxiety sensitivity overestimate in remembering pain. We also assessed whether emotion regulation strategies that direct attentio...

Gender differences in pain perception have been reported in literature. However, most such studies have ignored the role of female sex hormones in influencing pain response across menstrual cycle (MC). In this study, we have investigated the variation in pain response on different days of the menstrual cycle. Ninety subjects (60 females) were subjected to experimental pain of cold pressor task,...

OBJECTIVE To test whether an association between pain response and depression in females is present during preadolescence using a controlled pain stimulus and a clinically relevant assessment of depressive symptoms. METHOD In a sample of 232 girls, pain threshold and tolerance were assessed at age 10 years using the cold pressor task, and a diagnostic interview was used to assess depression s...

It was investigated whether an angry state, induced by a computer task with harassing comments, would lead to a decrease in cold pressor pain threshold and tolerance in comparison to a neutral situation. It was hypothesized that an increase in cardiovascular activity might partially mediate effects of anger. Furthermore, it was examined whether subjects given the opportunity to express anger wo...

Raynaud's phenomenon has been suggested as a predisposing factor for pulmonary vasospasm which may lead to pulmonary hypertension, but the occurrence of cold stimulus-induced pulmonary vasospasm has been inconsistent. Such inconsistent pulmonary vascular responses may be caused by differences in the production of endogenous vasodilators and vasoconstrictors among patients. Fourteen patients wit...

UNLABELLED We investigated changes in visual cortex excitability by analyzing visual evoked potential (VEP) habituation in healthy subjects during tonic pain evoked by the cold-pressor test (CPT). We tested VEP amplitude habituation (slope of the linear regression line for N1-P1 amplitude from the 1st to 6th block of 100 sweeps) in 19 healthy volunteers during 4 experimental conditions: baselin...