Nociception

Nociception is the nervous system’s detection and processing of stimuli that threaten or damage tissue. It can produce signals that contribute to pain, but nociception and pain are distinct.

Nociceptor: A sensory neuron or nerve ending that responds to potentially harmful stimuli. These specialized receptors initiate nociceptive signaling when they detect threat or tissue damage.
Pain: An unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with, or resembling that associated with, actual or potential tissue damage. Pain is a conscious experience; nociception is neural processing that can occur without it.
Hyperalgesia: An increased response to a stimulus that normally causes pain. Sensitized nociceptive pathways can make painful stimuli produce an exaggerated response.
Neuropathic pain: Pain caused by a lesion or disease of the somatosensory nervous system. It can arise from damaged neural pathways rather than harmful stimuli activating nociceptors.
Transduction (biology): The conversion of a stimulus into a change in a cell’s electrical or biochemical state. Nociceptors convert heat, pressure, or chemical threats into neural signals through transduction.
Nociceptive pain: Pain arising from actual or threatened damage to non-neural tissue through activation of nociceptors. This pain type is directly associated with nociceptor activity, unlike pain from nerve lesions.
Allodynia: Pain caused by a stimulus that does not normally provoke pain. Altered processing can make ordinarily harmless input engage pain-related responses.
Thermoreception: The sensory detection of temperature. Temperature sensing includes harmless warmth and cooling, while nociception concerns potentially damaging conditions.
Action potential: A rapid, propagated change in a cell’s membrane voltage that carries signals along excitable cells. Nociceptive signals travel along sensory neurons as action potentials.
Sensory neuron: A neuron that detects stimuli or carries sensory information from the body toward the central nervous system. Nociceptors are specialized sensory neurons or sensory nerve endings.

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