Instructions and experiential learning have similar impacts on pain and pain-related brain responses but produce dissociations in value-based reversal learning.

ABSTRACT: Recent data suggest that interactions between systems involved in higher order knowledge and associative learning drive responses during value-based learning. However, it is unknown how these systems impact subjective responses, such as pain. We tested how instructions and reversal learning influence pain and pain-evoked brain activation. Healthy volunteers (n=40) were either instructed about contingencies between cues and aversive outcomes or learned through experience in a paradigm where contingencies reversed three times. We measured predictive cue effects on pain and heat-evoked brain responses using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Predictive cues dynamically modulated pain perception as contingencies changed, regardless of whether participants received contingency instructions.

SUBMITTER: Atlas LY 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9681218 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature