Psychology

The distinctive experience of pain, beyond mere processing of nociceptive inputs, is much debated in psychology and neuroscience. One aspect of perceptual experience is captured by metacognition-the ability to monitor and evaluate one's own mental processes. We investigated confidence in judgements about nociceptive pain (i.e. pain that arises from the activation of nociceptors by a noxious stimulus) to determine whether metacognitive processes contribute to the distinctiveness of the pain experience. Our participants made intensity judgements about noxious heat, innocuous warmth, and visual contrast (first-order, perceptual decisions) and rated their confidence in those judgements (second-order, metacognitive decisions). First-order task performance between modalities was balanced using adaptive staircase procedures. For each modality, we quantified metacognitive efficiency (meta-d'/d')-the degree to which participants' confidence reports were informed by the same evidence that contributed to their perceptual judgements-and metacognitive bias (mean confidence)-the participant's tendency to report higher or lower confidence overall. We found no overall differences in metacognitive efficiency or mean confidence between modalities. Mean confidence ratings were highly correlated between all three tasks, reflecting stable inter-individual variability in metacognitive bias. However, metacognitive efficiency for pain varied independently of metacognitive efficiency for warmth and visual perception. That is, those participants who had higher metacognitive efficiency in the visual task also tended to have higher metacognitive efficiency in the warmth task, but not necessarily in the pain task. We thus suggest that some distinctive and idiosyncratic aspects of the pain experience may stem from additional variability at a metacognitive level. We further speculate that this additional variability may arise from the affective or arousal aspects of pain.

Placebo analgesia is explained by two learning processes: classical conditioning and observational learning. A third learning process, operant conditioning, has not previously been investigated as a mechanism of placebo effects. We aimed to induce placebo analgesia by operant conditioning.

Individuals with nonspecific chronic low back pain (NSCLBP) and central sensitization (CS) exhibit sensory hypersensitivity that may be related to pre-existing trait characteristics. Sensory profiles and trait anxiety-related characteristics have sensory sensitivity in common with CS.

This article presents the results of a parallel-group, non-randomized, controlled study that evaluated the feasibility of an online training program for improving observer detection of facial pain expression.

To optimally select chronic pain patients for different treatments, as it is of interest to identify patient characteristics that might moderate treatment effect. Our aim was to evaluate the impact of possible moderators on the effect of acupuncture treatment using a large data set.

Previous research has shown that youth with chronic pain who presented for a multidisciplinary evaluation report a history of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) (eg, abuse, neglect, parent/guardian separation or divorce) at a high rate (over 80%) and that those with pain and ACEs experience increased psychosocial impairment. Outside of chronic pain, evidence also suggests that youth with a history of ACEs experience poorer treatment outcomes. However, no study to date has examined treatment outcomes in youth with chronic pain and a history of ACEs. The current study aimed to examine the role of ACEs in multidisciplinary intensive pain rehabilitation treatment outcomes for youth with chronic pain.