Pain by association? Experimental modulation of human pain thresholds using classical conditioning

A classical conditioning framework is often used for clinical reasoning about pain that persists after tissue healing. However, experimental studies demonstrating classically conditioned pain in humans are lacking. The current study tested whether non-nociceptive somatosensory stimuli can come to modulate pain threshold after being paired with painful nociceptive stimuli in healthy humans. We used a differential simultaneous conditioning paradigm in which one non-painful vibrotactile conditioned stimulus (CS+) was simultaneously paired with an unconditioned painful laser stimulus (US), while another vibrotactile stimulus (CS-) was paired with a non-painful laser stimulus.

from The Journal of Pain http://ift.tt/29XAj22
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