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Papers of the Week


Papers: 30 Apr 2022 - 6 May 2022

RESEARCH TYPE:
Psychology


2022 May 01


J Pain

Alike, but not quite: Comparing the generalization of pain-related fear and pain-related avoidance.

Authors

Glogan E, Meulders M, Pfeiffer L, Vlaeyen J W, Meulders A
J Pain. 2022 May 01.
PMID: 35508274.

Abstract

Pain-related fear and -avoidance crucially contribute to pain chronification. People with chronic pain may adopt costly avoidance strategies above and beyond what is necessary, aligning with experimental findings of excessive fear generalization to safe movements in these populations. Furthermore, recent evidence suggests that, when avoidance is costly, it can dissociate from fear. Here, we investigated whether concurrently measured pain-related fear and costly avoidance generalization correspond in one task. We also explored whether healthy participants avoid excessively despite associated costs, and if avoidance would decrease as a function of dissimilarity from a pain-associated movement. In a robotic arm-reaching task, participants could avoid a low-cost, pain-associated movement trajectory (T+), by choosing a high-cost non-painful movement trajectory (T-), at opposite ends of a movement plane. Subsequently, in the absence of pain, we introduced three movement trajectories (G1-3) between T+ and T-, and one movement trajectory on the side of T- opposite to T+ (G4), linearly increasing in costs from T+ to G4. Avoidance was operationalized as maximal deviation from T+, and as trajectory choice. Fear learning was measured using self-reported pain-expectancy, pain-related fear, and startle eye-blink EMG. Self-reports generalized, both decreasing with increasing distance from T+. In contrast, all generalization trajectories were chosen equally, suggesting that avoidance-costs and previous pain balanced each other out. No effects emerged in the EMG. These results add to a growing body of literature showing that (pain-related) avoidance, especially when costly, can dissociate from fear, calling for a better understanding of the factors motivating, and mitigating, disabling avoidance.