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.”
