Decreased Pain Perception by Unconscious Emotional Pictures

Abstract

Pain perception arises from a complex interaction between a nociceptive stimulus and different emotional and cognitive factors, which appear to be mediated by both automatic and controlled systems. Previous evidence has shown that whereas conscious processing of unpleasant stimuli enhances pain perception, emotional influences on pain under unaware conditions are much less known. The aim of the present study was to investigate the modulation of pain perception by unconscious emotional pictures through an emotional masking paradigm. Two kinds of both somatosensory (painful and non-painful) and emotional stimulation (negative and neutral pictures) were employed. Fifty pain-free participants were asked to rate the perception of pain they were feeling in response to laser-induced somatosensory stimuli as faster as they can. Data from pain intensity and reaction times were measured. Statistical analyses revealed a significant effect for the interaction between pain and emotional stimulation, but surprisingly this relationship was opposite to expected. In particular, lower pain intensity scores and longer reaction times were found in response to negative images being strengthened this effect for painful stimulation. Present findings suggest a clear pain perception modulation by unconscious emotional contexts. Attentional capture mechanisms triggered by unaware negative stimulation could explain this phenomenon leading to a withdrawal of processing resources from pain.

The spiritual beliefs of cancer survivors: A thematic analysis

“…I know the causes of disease.). It is widely known that cognitive distancing from pain increases the threshold of pain perception (Peláez, Martínez-Iñigo, Barjola, Cardoso, & Mercado, 2016). It was explicit that the beliefs in the theory of karma, rebirth, and incessant presence of divine powers were the major attributes of spiritual beliefs of the cancer survivors.…”

Subliminal (latent) processing of pain and its evolution to conscious awareness

“…A few papers have addressed this concept in terms of how unconscious processing may either enhance or inhibit (see (Pelaez et al, 2016) pain. As such, unconscious emotional processing of interactive positive or negative events, feelings, sights, may produce changes that enhance the behavioral manifestation of pain.…”

“…Examples include: (1) Experimental manipulation of subconsciousness can affect nociceptive processing (Lewis et al, 2015); (2) unconscious manipulation of the placebo or nocebo responses (Jensen et al, 2012a); (3) decreased pain perception modulated by unconscious emotional pictures (Pelaez et al, 2016); and (4) classical conditioning of pain without awareness of conditioning cues (Jensen et al, 2015). Unconscious perception – processing of sensory information that we are not aware of – has been evaluated in other systems including visual (Brogaard, 2011; Kiefer et al, 2011) and motor (Morsella and Poehlman, 2013).…”

An incremental dual-task paradigm to investigate pain attenuation by task difficulty, affective content and threat value

“…In line with this, it has been shown that images with negative valence affects visual-search performance (e.g., [ 37 ]). Similarly, there is evidence that images with different affective content (e.g., positive versus negative valence images) affect perceived pain intensity of different types of noxious stimulation (e.g., [ 2 – 3 , 38 – 39 ]; for a review see [ 13 ]). However, the effect of affective content on perceived pain intensity is mixed.…”

“…However, the effect of affective content on perceived pain intensity is mixed. For example, Peláez et al [ 38 ] showed that subliminally presented negative emotional images decreased perceived pain intensity, whereas Kenntner-Mabiala et al [ 39 ] showed that viewing (supraliminal) negative emotional images increased perceived pain intensity. Second, attentional-bias models also incorporate the threat value of the noxious stimulation which—like affective content—can bias observers’ attention to pain signals rather than recruit attentional resources per se .…”