From Cheewee Tan

Pain Research - Queen Margaret University College

Personal Details

Researcher’s Name: Chee-Wee, Tan
Position: Lecturer
University: Queen Margaret University College, Edinburgh
School: School of Health Sciences
Subject Area: Physiotherapy
Room: G17, Leith Campus
Phone: (+44) 0131 3173641
Email: ctan@qmuc.ac.uk

Research Groups:
Pain & Palliative Care Research Focus Group
Lymphoedema Research Focus Group

Research interests:
Pain psychophysics, the role of attention in chronic pain, Signal Detection Theory.

Current research:

I am currently investigation the use of signal detection theory as an experimental paradigm to assess to influence of pain on attentional capacity. The modality of experimental pain induction is thermal stimulation. The working hypothesis is that as the temperatures of the stimuli increase, the associated magnitude of pain increases correspondingly. In doing so, the increased magnitude of pain may disrupt the attentional capacity of the observer such that the discrimination ability is reduced. This will be reflected in the observer’s lower sensitivity for the discrimination task. It may be that chronic pain sufferers perform poorer on discrimination tasks due to the disruptive nature of their clinical pain. However, further research is warranted to understand the mechanism for this disruptive nature of pain.

Publications

TAN CW, PALMER S, MARTIN D, ROCHE P. (2005). Chronic pain sufferers exhibit poorer noxious discrimination ability compared to healthy individuals. 11th World Congress on Pain, Sydney, Australia, August 21-26, 1596-P99.[1]

TAN CW, PALMER S, MARTIN D, VETO J, ROCHE P. (2005). The effects of a topical anaesthetic (EMLA®) on noxious thermal discrimination: A psychophysical study. The Pain Society Annual Scientific Meeting, Edinburgh, March 8-11, p22.[2]

TAN CW, PALMER S, MARTIN D, ROCHE P. (2005). The influence of stimulus presentation frequency on noxious thermal discrimination: A methodological study. The Pain Society Annual Scientific Meeting, Edinburgh, March 8-11, p23.[3]

TAN CW, PALMER S, MARTIN D, KIRK K. (2004). Comparison of context-coding noise within discrimination and intensity rating methods in the study of pain perception. The Pain Society Annual Scientific Meeting, Manchester, March 30-April 2, p105.

For Colleagues:

Events:
QMUC Pain Seminars (~~Next semester programmes to be announced~~)

For Fellow Research students:

I’ve not been the office a lot due to research commitments. If you need any software or materials, please email me (ctan@qmuc.ac.uk) and I’ll try to get back to you. Or if you just want to go out for a cuppa, by all means call me. I won’t post my tel no. here, you guys should have it anyway.

For Students:

The materials for your modules and recommended readings are categorized according to the topics. Click on the links to download the materials.

Useful Links:
International Association for the Study of Pain [4]
International Society for Psychophysics [5]