Noxious skin stimuli which are sufficiently intense to produce tissue injury, characteristically
generate prolonged poststimulus sensory disturbances that include continuing pain, an
increased sensitivity to noxious stimuli and pain following innocuous stimuli. This could
result from either a reduction in the thresholds of skin nociceptors (sensitization) or an
increase in the excitability of the central nervous system so that normal inputs now evoke
exaggerated responses. Because sensitization of peripheral receptors occurs following …