Electrophysiological evidence for the effects of pain on the different stages of reward evaluation under a purchasing situation

Abstract

Pain and reward have crucial roles in determining human behaviors. It is still unclear how pain influences different stages of reward processing. This study aimed to assess the physical pain’s impact on reward processing with event-related potential (ERP) method. In the present study, a flash sale game (reward-seeking task) was carried out, in which the participants were instructed to press a button as soon as possible to obtain the earphone (a reward) after experiencing either electric shock or not and finally evaluated the outcome of their response. High-temporal-resolution electroencephalogram data were simultaneously recorded to reveal the neural mechanism underlying the pain effect. The ERP analyses revealed that pain affected the feedback processing reflected by feedback-related negativity (FRN) and P300. Specifically, participants in the nopain situation exhibited greater FRN discrepancy between success and failure feedbacks relative to that in the pain situation. Moreover, the P300 amplitude was enhanced in the nopain condition compared to the pain condition regardless of the feedback valence. These results demonstrate that the pain reduced the sensitivity to the reward valence at the early stage and weakened the motivational salience at the late stage. Altogether, this study extends the understanding of the effect of pain on reward processing from the temporal perspective under a purchasing situation.