Thermosensory predictive coding underpins an illusion of pain.

ABSTRACT: The human brain has a remarkable ability to learn and update its beliefs about the world. Here, we investigate how thermosensory learning shapes our subjective experience of temperature and the misperception of pain in response to harmless thermal stimuli. Through computational modeling, we demonstrate that the brain uses a probabilistic predictive coding scheme to update beliefs about temperature changes based on their uncertainty. We find that these expectations directly modulate the perception of pain in the thermal grill illusion. Quantitative microstructural brain imaging further revealed that individual variability in computational parameters related to uncertainty-driven learning and decision-making is reflected in the microstructure of brain regions such as the precuneus, posterior

SUBMITTER: Ehmsen JF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11900864 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature