GoogleCodeExporter
commented
9 years ago I am still confused by this, and am wondering if we are talking about the same
thing when referring for example to "headache".
I will use the definition from wikipedia "A headache or cephalgia is pain
anywhere in the region of the head or neck." as a starting point. In the paper
"Towards an Ontology of Pain and of Pain-Related Phenomena", available at
ontology.buffalo.edu/medo/Pain.pdf, the authors propose a treatment of pain.
They define pain as "pain =def. an unpleasant experience on the part of a human
subject that is both sensory and emotional and that is of a type that is
either canonical pain (PCT) or phenomenologically indistinguishable from
canonical pain" adding "The canonical pain process will involve activity in
many components of the central nervous system. Part of the physical basis for
this process is localized in the sensory cortex and emotional centers."
This seem to indicate that pain is not a quality, and therefore headache
wouldn't be one.
I think there is a disposition to have a headache (similar to the disease
disposition) and there is a process realizing this disposition, the headache
(similar to the disease course) Authors of the paper above also mention a
physical basis for pain, which could be treated in the same way than disorders
are the physical basis for disease.
Regarding the sunburn example, in the paper mentioned above, authors take the
example "primary sunburn" to illustrate PCT, pain with Concordant Tissue
damage, and indicate that the physical basis of the pain is the activation of
nociceptive system through peripheral tissue damage. This seem again consistent
with the treatment proposed above.
Original comment by mcour...@gmail.com on 28 Jan 2011 at 6:12
Original issue reported on code.google.com by
bjoern.p...@gmail.comon 16 Dec 2009 at 3:21