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Alex Mitchell

@agmitchell.bsky.social

606 followers 656 following 48 posts

Scientist attempting to understand pain 😖 temperature 🔥❄️ & attention 👀 in the human brain 🧠 In my spare time: 🐕🥊🧘🏻‍♀️🏃🏻‍♀️ & 👩🏻‍🎨 Brit in Denmark. She/her

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Alex Mitchell @agmitchell.bsky.social · 30/08/2023

We hypothesized that manipulating contrast would influence the rate and prevalence of PHS. We tested over 200 participants under conditions of differing thermal contrast. As thermal contrast increased, the number of individuals reporting non-painful PHS also increased!

A scientific figure showing that those individuals with innocuous PHS also had higher thermal contrasts during the task

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Alex Mitchell @agmitchell.bsky.social · 30/08/2023

Contrast enhancement emphasizes regions of transition, like edges in visual scenes. To test our theory that PHS depends on thermal contrast, we adapted classical measures of PHS, the Thermal Sensory Limen task, to manipulate thermal contrast (the distance between warm and cold temperatures).

A figure that shows examples of increasing visual contrast from low to high, and the corresponding thermal contrast, where luminance values (in vision) are replaced with temperatures. E.g. in conditions of low thermal contrast there is little difference between the high and low temperatures. A visual depiction of the methods used in the study is also presented.

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