The peripheral somatosensory system bestows mammals with a diverse repertoire of sensory modalities: gentle touch, mechanical pain, itch, thermosensation, and proprioception. The cells and molecules that transduce many of these stimuli have already been characterized. But how somatosensory neurons transduce acutely painful mechanical forces is largely unknown and remains one of the 'final frontiers' of sensory neurobiology. In an effort to fill this gap in knowledge, recent studies have identified subpopulations of mechanical pain neurons and uncovered novel modulators of mechanical pain. These studies have greatly advanced our understanding of how noxious mechanical stimuli are detected in mammals. Here, we discuss recent progress in noxious mechanosensation and highlight new behavioral methods to assess mechanical pain.

中文翻译：

---

接触机械疼痛机制

外周躯体感觉系统赋予哺乳动物多种感觉方式：轻触、机械痛、痒、热感觉和本体感觉。已经对转导许多这些刺激的细胞和分子进行了表征。但是，体感神经元如何转导剧烈疼痛的机械力在很大程度上是未知的，并且仍然是感觉神经生物学的“最后前沿”之一。为了填补这一知识空白，最近的研究已经确定了机械疼痛神经元的亚群，并发现了新的机械疼痛调节剂。这些研究极大地促进了我们对如何在哺乳动物中检测到有害机械刺激的理解。在这里，我们讨论了有害机械感觉的最新进展，并强调了评估机械疼痛的新行为方法。