Objectively Measuring Pain: A New Platform

How much pain are you in on a scale from one to 10?

This simple method is still the way pain is measured in doctors’ offices, clinics, adn hospitals-but how do I know if my five out of 10 is the same as yours?

A new, early-stage platform aims to more objectively measure and share our individual perception of pain. It measures brain activity in two people to understand how their experiences compare and recreate one person’s pain for the other. The platform was developed as a partnership between the large Tokyo-based telecommunications company NTT Docomo and startup PaMeLa, short for Pain Measurement Laboratory, in Osaka, Japan.

It’s part of a project from Docomo called Feel Tech. “We are developing a human-augmentation platform designed to deepen mutual understanding between people,” a Docomo representative told IEEE Spectrum by email. (Answers were originally provided in Japanese and translated by Docomo’s public relations.) “Previously, we focused on sharing movement, touch, and taste-senses that are inherently difficult to express and communicate. This time, our focus is on pain, another sense that is challenging to articulate.”

Docomo demonstrated the platform last month at the Combined Exhibition of Advanced technologies (CEATEC), Japan’s largest electronics trade show.

How Shared Pain Perception Tech Works

The system consists of three components: a pain-sensing device, a platform for estimating the difference in sensitivity, and a heat-based actuation device.

First, the system uses electroencephalography (EEG) to measure brain waves