title: Cutaneous localisation of laser induced pain in humans.
abstract: Localisation of painful laser-induced stimuli has been compared to localisation of tactile stimuli in normal humans. Laser stimulation evoked pain of two qualities (sharp pricking pain and hot burning pain). Sharp pricking pain was found to be localised with almost equal precision to tactile stimuli (13.8 +/- 3.4 versus 11.6 +/- 2.3 mm) on the dorsum of the hand, (21.5 +/- 7.9 versus 20.6 +/- 7.5 mm) on the forearm and (15.5 +/- 5.6 versus 13.8 +/- 5.4 mm) on the foot, respectively. There was no significant difference between the ability to localise tactile stimuli and hot burning pain except on the dorsum of the hand. These results indicate that tactile information is not essential for the accurate localisation of cutaneous pain.
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D004558:Electric Stimulation; D005260:Female; D005528:Foot / Q000502:physiology*; D005542:Forearm / Q000502:physiology*; D006225:Hand / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007834:Lasers; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010146:Pain