Also known as neural injury pain. The term deaf-ferentiation pain is indebted to the Latin words de (away from, 'negation'), and affere (to take somewhere, to bring somewhere). It is used, especially in the older literature, to denote a type of pain attributed to a disruption of neural connectivity, due to the severance of afferent axons and/orneu-rons (i.e. deafferentiation). Phenomenologically, deafferentiation pain can present in the form of "hyperaesthesia, "hyperpathia, "allodynia, " phantom pain, "causalgia, and spontaneous pain. Although deafferentiation pain has sometimes been lumped together with " central pain on the basis of 'common clinical features', the two syndromes are distinctly different. It has been suggested that the terms deafferentiation pain and neural injury pain are confusing, and that they should perhaps be discarded altogether for clinical purposes. The question of whether pain can also be experienced in a hallucinated form is a knotty philosophical issue.
References
Canavero, S., Bonicalzi, V. (2007). Central pain syndrome. Pathophysiology, diagnosis and management. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Devor, M., Basbaum, A.L., Bennett, G.J., Blumberg, H., Campbell, J.N., Dembowsky, K.P., Guilbaud, G., Jänig, W., Koltzenburg,
M., Levine, J.D., Otten, U.H., Portenoy, R.K. (1991). Group report: Mechanisms of neuropathic pain following peripheral injury.In: Towards a new pharmacotherapy ofpain.Edited by Basbaum, I., Basson, J.-M. Chichester: Wiley.