Nociception

Scientific basis

Intense mechanical, thermal or chemical stimuli activate specialized receptors, nociceptors, carried by thin nerve fibers: Aδ fibers, which are myelinated, and C fibers, which are unmyelinated. The signal is transmitted to the spinal cord and then to the brain, and it is modulated at several levels.

The IASP clearly distinguishes the two notions: nociception is a neural process, pain a sensory and emotional experience. Nociception can occur without pain, and pain can occur without identifiable nociception.

Blue Portance / SBNFA™ reading

In the SBNFA™ reading, nociception is one source of information among others. When a tissue threat is detected, it can modify postural and motor strategies, for example by leading a person to avoid a point of support. It is not a component of ordinary postural control.

Contribution to the analysis of sitting

A change of position to relieve a point of support may reflect a response to a nociceptive signal. Seating analysis does not record nociception and cannot establish its origin.

Not to be confused with

Pain, a sensory and emotional experience that cannot be reduced to nociception; nociceptive pain, a category of pain linked to the activation of nociceptors by tissue damage; mechanoreception, the detection of ordinary mechanical stimuli (touch, pressure, stretch); interoception, the perception of the body's internal state.

Related terms

Nociceptive pain · Interoception · Mechanoreceptors · Central sensitization

Sources and scope

• IASP: pain terminology (reference definitions)
• Woolf and Ma (2007): nociceptors, detectors of noxious stimuli (Neuron)
• Basbaum et al. (2009): cellular and molecular mechanisms of pain (Cell)