Pain tolerance and its biological response

Kristian S.Mathew G.

Per 7 chemistry

Pain tolerance

In this experiment we tested the pain tolerance of individuals by immersing their hands up to the elbow in ice water.

Hypothesis:

1) Males will have a higher pain tolerance than females

2) Athletes will have a higher pain tolerance than non-athletes

3) In a group test people will perform better than they had before, in a lone setting

Background

Investigating pain tolerance and its chemical effect on the body is important because it provides a chance to discover more about pain, and also potentially how to resolve chronic pain.

Background: Pain

Pain is a fairly abstract idea, everyone on the planet knows what it is, but it is extremely difficult to quantify and observe objectively, this inherently makes it a difficultarea of study.

Background: Synaptic response

Vesicles filled with neurotransmitters are dumped into synaptic gap

Uptake proteins quickly recycle neurotransmitters for reuse

Most synapses connect axons to dendrites

Background: Nociceptor

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2Jzt3zd8vQ&NR=1

Procedure

We began by having each candidate fill out a questionnaire with their personal information such as› Athleticism› Previous pain experiences› Previous Icing

The variables changed in this experiment were only the gender, athleticism and group size, the bucket and temperature of ice was the constant. Our dependent variable was time. We measured the time that someone was capable of holding their arm in water.

Data

Athletics Non Athletic

11 5

Average time: 300 seconds 190 seconds

Girl Boy

8 8

Average time: 231.25 seconds 300 seconds

We found that a group testing didn’t change anything.

Conclusion:

We found that males do, indeed, have a higher pain tolerance compared to females.

We found that Athletes have a higher pain tolerance than non-athletes

We found that a group test did actually affect the ability to tolerate pain

Improvements:

More test subjects Better, more solitary, testing area for

better control Possibly be able to test more specific

areas, such as bribery (incentive) or repeated trials

Our bucket could have had a mixer of some sort, in order to avoid the water around the subjects hand from warming up