Ouch! Solving the riddle of pain

We all know what hurts, but why is it so difficult to describe? Emma Cook meets the neurologists attempting to solve one of medicine’s most enduring issues and what it means for patients – and hears from a woman who has never felt pain

Deep in the basement of Oxford’s Institute of Biomedical Engineering, I am sitting in a pain laboratory trying to describe a series of small but exquisitely sharp electrical shocks emanating from an electrode attached to my index finger. It is proving to be something of a challenge. “Yeah, no, that’s really, er, unpleasant,” I offer, inarticulately, as the electric shocks slowly ramp up, their intensity putting me in mind of an excruciating jellyfish sting last summer.

“Ow, that really hurts,” I manage. Up goes the volume. “And this?” Language escapes me and I emit a small reflexive cry instead. Dr Ben Seymour, a professor of clinical neuroscience and honorary consultant neurologist at Oxford University who has designed these tests, looks rather pleased. We are working our way briskly through a varied menu of different aches and pains, some heated, some chilled. The electric shock to the finger is the equivalent of an injury signal, a short sharp warning pain to alert us to danger. “It’s the ‘ow’ one,” explains Seymour. “I call it the wasp as it has a kind of angriness to it.”