Do we all feel the pain with the same intensity?

Absolutely. Some years ago, neuroscientist Bob Coghill and his colleagues from Wake Forest University in North Carolina (USA) analyzed the brains of several subjects with the help of images obtained by nuclear magnetic resonance while they were subjected to the same painful stimulus, and they verified that each person has a different sensitivity to pain , and that it is not always directly related to the damage received. The thalamus , the region that receives the painful message from the nerves, is activated in all of us in a similar way. But once the signal reaches the brain, "each person values the information based on their previous experience, their emotions and their expectations," explains Coghill.

On the other hand, the anticipation of pain causes its intensity to increase . Arne May from the University of Hamburg tested this by applying heat to the arms of several volunteers for six consecutive days. Half of the subjects were warned that the pain would become more and more intense, and they reported experiencing the same discomfort every day. The rest of the participants, who did not receive this information but underwent the same increased stimulus, curiously felt less pain as the days passed. In addition, the words we use can also influence the perception of pain . For example, if we describe that the injection of a vaccine will be "almost imperceptible" our brain feels much less pain than if we describe it as "horrible" or "devastating" before applying it, as demonstrated by a recent German study published in Pain magazine.