Generalization and Extinction of Concept-BasedPain-Related Fear

In chronic pain, pain-related fear seems to overgeneralize to safe stimuli, thus contributing to excessive fear and avoidance behavior. Evidence shows that pain-related fear can be acquired and generalized based on conceptual knowledge. Using a fear conditioning paradigm, we investigated whether this concept-based pain-related fear could also be extinguished. During acquisition, exemplars of 1 action category (conditioned stimuli [CSs]; eg, opening boxes) were followed by pain (CS+), whereas exemplars of another action category were not (CS –; eg, closing boxes).

Source: The Journal of Pain - October 5, 2018 Category: Materials Science Authors: Eveliina Glogan, Christine van Vliet, Rani Roelandt, Ann Meulders Tags: Original Reports Source Type: research