RT Journal Article
T1 How to make calibration less painful—A proposition for an automatic, reliable and time‐efficient procedure
A1 Swider, Karolina Joanna
A1 Moratti, Stephan
A1 Bruña Fernández, Ricardo
AB In behavioral and neurophysiological pain studies, multiple types of calibration methods are used to quantify the individual pain sensation stimuli. Often, studies lack a detailed calibration procedure description, data linearity, and quality quantification and omit required control for sex pain differences. This hampers study repetition and interexperimental comparisons. Moreover, typical calibration procedures require a high number of stimulations, which may cause discomfort and stimuli habituation among participants. To overcome those shortcomings, we present an automatic calibration procedure with a novel stimuli estimation method for intraepidermal stimulation. We provide an in-depth data analysis of the collected self-reports from 70 healthy volunteers (37 males) and propose a method based on a dynamic truncated linear regression model (tLRM). We compare its estimates for the sensation (t) and pain (T) thresholds and mid-pain stimulation (MP), with those calculated using traditional estimation methods and standard linear regression models. Compared to the other methods, tLRM exhibits higher R2 and requires 36% fewer stimuli applications and has significantly higher t intensity and lower T and MP intensities. Regarding sex differences, t and T were found to be lower for females compared to males, regardless of the estimation method. The proposed tLRM method quantifies the calibration procedure quality, minimizes its duration and invasiveness, and provides validation of linearity between stimuli intensity and subjective scores, making it an enabling technique for further studies. Moreover, our results highlight the importance of control for sex in pain studies
PB Wiley
SN 0048-5772
SN 1469-8986
YR 2024
FD 2024-01-17
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/104277
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/104277
LA eng
NO Świder, K., Moratti, S., & Bruña, R. (2024). How to make calibration less painful—A proposition for an automatic, reliable and time-efficient procedure. Psychophysiology, 61, e14505. https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.14505
NO 2023 Acuerdos transformativos CRUEH2020 EU- funded Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (MSCA-IF), Grant/Award Number: 896262
NO European Commission
DS Docta Complutense
RD 30 dic 2025