Emotion and Pain: The modulation of pain by reflective and impulsive processes and its neuronal basis

Abstract:

The current project aims at elucidating impulsive and reflective processes that are capable of modulating the perception of pain. Putative mechanisms that will be focused on are the processing of pain-relevant information, expectations of positive or negative consequences, and higher cognitive control processes. The main aim of this follow-up project is the better understanding of pain modulation by the interaction of reflective and impulsive processes (RIM-Model, Strack and Deutsch, 2004) and its neuronal correlates.

In the first series of experiments, the processing of pain-relevant information, namely the facial expression of pain, will be investigated. In addition, a potentially modulating influence of trait empathy will be examined. In further experiments, the influence and neuronal correlates of anticipatory and cognitive regulatory processes on the processing of pain will be investigated. Firstly, the potentially divergent effects of fear (phasic response to a specific threat stimulus) in contrast to anxiety (sustained vigilance to a diffuse, unspecific threat) on pain processing will be disentangled. Secondly, the effect of anticipation of a positive or a negative outcome (placebo vs. nocebo) on the perception of pain will be investigated. In more detail, it will be investigated whether an actual individual experience at an earlier stage is a necessary component of the pain-modulating effect of expectations, or if pure information alone is sufficient to elicit these placebo/nocebo effects. Furthermore, it will be investigated whether automatic impulsive processes (emotional reactions induced by affective stimuli) can modulate reflective processes (expectations). Thirdly, it will be examined whether cognitive regulation processes (e.g., reappraisal) as described in emotion regulation research also lead to similar effects of pain regulation, and which are the involved neuronal networks. By applying a neuro-cognitive approach we expect a better understanding of the neuronal basis of impulsive and reflective processes influencing the perception of pain.