Pain
While large mechanosensory neurons such as type I/group Aß display adaptation, smaller type IV/group C nociceptive neurons do not. As a result, pain does not usually subside rapidly but persists for long periods of time; in contrast, one quickly stops receiving touch or sensory information if surroundings remain constant.
Read more about this topic: Neural Adaptation
Famous quotes containing the word pain:
“The end will come quickly, my love. There is a pain beyond pain, an agony so intense it shocks the mind into instant oblivion. We’ll find immortality together, for they’ll remember me through you.”
—Crane Wilbur (1889–1973)
“The Harmless Torturers. In the Bad Old Days, each torturer inflicted severe pain on one victim. Things have now changed. Each of the thousand torturers presses a button, thereby turning the switch once on each of the thousand instruments. The victims suffer the same severe pain. But none of the torturers makes any victim’s pain perceptibly worse.”
—Derek Parfit (b. 1943)
“The fox, he felt, had never seen his past disposed of like a fall of water. He had never measured off his day in moments: another—another—another. But now, thrown down so deeply in himself, into the darkness of the well, surprised by pain and hunger, might he not revert to an earlier condition, regain capacities which formerly were useless to him, pass from animal to Henry, become human in his prison, X his days, count, wait, listen for another—another—another—another?”
—William Gass (b. 1924)