Hair pulling prompts one of the fastest known pain signals
The ouch of hair pulling is transmitted with the help of a protein used to sense light touches. These details could lead to new treatments.
New experiments reveal how the pain of a pull travels to the brain
Scientists have uncovered the fast cellular machinery that carries the distinct pain of a hair pull.
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CHICAGO — Big news for suffering from sisters: Scientists have found the sensors that signal the painful zing of a hair pull. And this pain message can rip along a nerve fiber at about 100 miles an hour, placing it an awful lot of the fastest known pain signals.
The invention, presented October eight on the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, offers insight into the assorted ways our bodies sense and reply to different different types of pain.
Pain can come from many catastrophes — cuts, jabs, pinches, cramps, bites, slaps, stubbing a toe within the dead of night. And while our bodies can basically tell these insults apart on account of varied biological pathways, all of them hurt. “It’s not surprising that we have now discovered many, many methods to make [pain] happen,” says neuroscientist Gregory Dussor of the University of Texas at Dallas. “Because when it doesn’t, we don’t reside.”
Laboratory tests showed a hair pull to be about 10 times as painful as a pinprick, neuroscientist Emma Kindström of Linköping University in Sweden and colleagues found. The pain of the pull relies on a massive, propeller-shaped protein also called PIEZO2, along with tests showed. That sensor change into known to detect mechanical forces, including light touches, but wasn’t thought to detect acute pain signals. Those that lack this protein don’t feel hair-pull pain.
A hair-pull signal moves along nerve fibers much faster than other different types of pain, Kindström says, traveling in bursts along an insulated conduit also called an Aβ nerve fiber. Other different types of pain signals, similar to a burn from a hot stove, commute more slowly along different different types of fibers.
People most surely vary in their pain responses to hair pulls, she says. “Some people experience taking an exceedingly, very hot shower, while some people in finding it very painful. I don’t see why hair pulling may be different.” She sees variability in her pet dogs. Harry, her white Pomeranian, doesn’t mind getting brushed. But Norton, her Chihuahua, is extraordinarily sensitive to fur pulling, so he inflicts pain back, with a bite.
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