Differential Operant Conditioning of Emotional-Motivational and Sensory-Discriminative Pain Responses.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The experience of pain consists of different components, including sensory-discriminative and emotional-motivational components. While these components are often well aligned, they can also dissociate. Operant conditioning may selectively modulate one component without affecting the other. However, evidence directly comparing operant conditioning effects on both emotional-motivational and sensory-discriminative components of pain is lacking. The aim of the present study was to test whether operant conditioning would differentially affect behavioral surrogate measures of emotional-motivational and sensory-discriminative pain responses.

Methods

62 healthy participants performed in two testing sessions a pain avoidance task to assess emotional-motivational pain respo

SUBMITTER: Flury ML 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12630449 | biostudies-literature | 2026 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature