Decreasing pain tolerance outside of awareness

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Psychosomatic Medicine
• Neuroscience

Background:

• Medically unexplained symptoms (MUSs) represent a significant global health and economic challenge.
• Pain complaints without identifiable organic pathology are the most common form of MUSs.
• Cognitive models propose that activated illness-related memory influences perception and interpretation of bodily signals, potentially leading to symptom reporting.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether activating illness-related memory, without conscious awareness, leads to decreased pain tolerance (PT).
• To test a key component of a cognitive model for medically unexplained symptoms.

Main Methods:

• A subliminal priming technique was employed to activate illness-related memory without conscious awareness.
• Eighty participants were randomly assigned to four conditions: health complaints (HCs), neutral content, general bodily sensations, or negative valence.
• Pain tolerance was measured using a cold pressor task.

Main Results:

• Participants subliminally primed with health complaint words exhibited significantly lower pain tolerance compared to those primed with neutral words.
• Priming with general bodily sensations or negative valence words did not significantly alter pain tolerance relative to neutral priming.

Conclusions:

• The findings indicate that pain tolerance can be involuntarily reduced through the activation of illness-related memory.
• This supports the hypothesis that subconscious activation of illness-related memory plays a role in the development of somatic complaints in medically unexplained symptoms.
• The results provide partial evidence for cognitive models positing chronically activated illness-related memory as a mechanism for psychosomatic symptom generation.