Pain wind-up
Perception of pain
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Pain wind-up is the increase in pain intensity over time when a given stimulus is delivered repeatedly above a critical rate. It is caused by repeated stimulation of group C peripheral nerve fibers, leading to progressively increasing electrical response in the corresponding spinal cord (posterior horn) neurons due to priming of the NMDA receptor based response.[1][2] It describes an exponentially progressive increase in firing of wide dynamic range neuron with repeated stimulation.