Sensory psychophysiology comprises investigations of the quantitative relations of physiological processes and sensory experiences. It has to be distinguished from classical psychophysics dealing with the relations of external stimuli and perceptions, and from sensory physiology concerned with the reactions of neuronal systems to external stimuli without direct recourse to subjective sensory experiences.

Psychophysiological pain studies require the collection of physiological data and pain reports from human beings in the same experiment, or at least in similarly designed experiments. In some cases, physiological data were obtained from other species, mainly primates, and correlated with sensory experiences of human subjects to whom the same sets of stimuli were applied. This kind of research has been conducted with theoretical and practical goals: to gain insight into the organization of the nociceptive system or to obtain physiological parameters for the measurement of pain reactions in therapeutic studies.