Opposite patterns of change in perception of imagined and physically induced pain over the course of repeated thermal stimulations

Abstract

This study identified opposite patterns of change in perception of imagined pain (sensitization) and physically induced pain (habituation). The findings show that individuals anticipate that they would become increasingly sensitive to repeated pain stimuli, which might also have clinical implications.

Temporal dynamics of hippocampal activity predict stable patterns of sensitization or habituation to noxious stimulation across sessions

“…If unavoidable noxious stimuli are perceived to pose no threat, pain habituation may help preserve resources. When empirically examining group effects, proportions of habituators and sensitizers reported varies greatly[19,25,70,27,29,32,37,45,50,51,68]. Our finding is the first to indicate that the propensity for an individual to habituate or sensitize to pain is stable within individuals across time and context and, hence, may serve as a valuable phenotypic marker.…”

“…In experimental contexts, it is frequently reported that individuals habituate to pain [13,22,25,27,29,37,50,68,70,73]. However, multiple studies demonstrate the opposite (sensitization) [19,22,32,45,51].…”

Dispositional and situational personal features and acute post-collision head and neck pain: Double mediation of pain catastrophizing and pain sensitivity

“…One possible suggestion as to why it can fill a mediating role would be to consider the PSQ as a tool which represents an individual’s imagination of pain. Imaging works [ 55 – 57 ] showed that pain imagination is associated with increased activity of brain regions involved in the pain-related neural network. Thus, it can be assumed that mediating role of PSQ (which reflects deeper cortical representations of the pain matrix) stems from its ability to depict specific routes of pain modulation that shape the manner in which individuals recall, process, and score a pain experience.…”

Give Me a Pain that I am used to: Distinct Habituation Patterns to Painful & Non-painful Stimulation

“…Pain habituation is commonly referred to as the adjustment to continuous or repetitive pain, resulting in a decrease in perceived pain intensity and pain-related responses. Habituation has been described repeatedly for subjective pain reports (Ernst et al, 1986;Rodriguez-Raecke et al, 2010;Nickel et al, 2014;Bauch et al, 2017;Gács et al, 2017;Eitner et al, 2018) and has been shown to go along with changes in electrodermal activity, reflecting autonomic responses to pain (Petrovic et al, 2004;Mobascher et al, 2010). In addition, brain activity as assessed using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has also been shown to habituate during repeated painful stimulation, predominately in cingulate, insular and somatosensory cortices (Becerra et al, 1999;Ibinson et al, 2004;Christmann et al, 2007;Mobascher et al, 2010;Hahn et al, 2013;Nickel et al, 2014), even when repetition was delayed by several days (Bingel et al, 2007).…”