Human Studies

The Fear-Avoidance Model (FAM) is a leading theoretical paradigm for explaining persistent pain following musculoskeletal injury. The model suggests that as injuries heal, pain-related outcomes are increasingly determined by psychological, rather than physiological factors. Increasing literature, however, suggests that neurophysiological processes related to pain sensitivity also play an important role in chronicity. To date, there has been limited research that has specifically explored the role of pain sensitivity within the FAM. This study addresses this gap by evaluating whether clinical measures of pain sensitivity help explain FAM-related outcomes, beyond model-relevant psychological predictors.

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.

Fibromyalgia (FM) is a generalized chronic pain condition associated with multiple cognitive impairments, including altered inhibitory processes. Inhibition is a key component of human executive functions and shares neural substrate with pain processing, which may explain the inhibitory deficits in FM. Here, we investigated the integrity of brain inhibitory mechanisms in these patients.

To investigate the combined impact of somatic and psychosocial factors on symptom severity and physical and mental quality of life (QoL) in male and female patients with chronic pelvic pain syndrome (CPPS).

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.