Soreness Reminds Me of Grief: Patients with Chronic Pain Show Less Differentiated Representations of Emotional Feelings and Bodily States

People experience similarities between emotional feelings and bodily states on a daily basis, but both the magnitude and pervasiveness of this experiential similarity varies across individuals. Inspired by previous findings that chronic pain (CP) is characterized by strengthened pain-affect coupling and a reduced interoceptive accuracy, we conducted two cross-sectional studies to examine whether patients with CP would exhibit less differentiated perception and mental representation of emotional feelings and bodily states.
Source: The Journal of Pain - Category: Materials Science Authors: Source Type: research