Somatic amplification
A phenomenon that amplifies pain. The predictive brain hypothesis explains it through variations in precision.
Example
A patient whose foot appeared to have been pierced by a 16 cm nail reported excruciating pain, but removing the shoe revealed that the nail had passed between the toes and caused no injury:
In one report (6), Fisher et al. described the case of a builder who jumped down onto a 7-inch nail, which pierced his boot at the toe level (Figure 1, left panel). The man was in pain and required intravenous sedation in the emergency room. However, when the boot was cut away, it turned out that the nail had fortunately passed between his toes as opposed to its apparent impaling of the foot. The man’s agonizing pain was elicited solely by his misperception—a case of somatic amplification. —Biological substrate for somatoform disorders: importance of pathophysiology
Signals from nociceptors are only one of the many causes of the experience of pain.