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Updated: Apr 21, 2026
07:28
Psychophysically-anchored, Robust Thresholding in Studying Pain-related Lateralization of Oscillatory Prestimulus Activity
Published on: January 21, 2017
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Relative valuation of pain in human orbitofrontal cortex
Joel S Winston1, Ivo Vlaev2, Ben Seymour3
1Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL, London WC1N 3BG, United Kingdom, UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, London WC1N 3AR, United Kingdom, joel.winston@ucl.ac.uk.
Summary
The brain
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Health Economics
- Pain Research
Background:
- Pain valuation is crucial in healthcare and economics.
- Monetary value assigned to pain is context-dependent.
- Previous research shows people pay more to avoid moderate pain in low-pain contexts.
Purpose of the Study:
- Investigate if context affects neural pain representation.
- Determine if context influences pain valuation behavior.
- Explore the neural basis of context-dependent pain valuation.
Main Methods:
- Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used.
- Participants reported willingness to pay (WTP) to avoid electrical foot stimuli.
- A contextual manipulation presented medium pain stimuli in low- or high-pain blocks.
Main Results:
- No context-dependent activity found in the traditional pain matrix.
- Activity in the right lateral orbitofrontal cortex (lOFC) showed contextual dependency.
- lOFC activity correlated with the rank of pain intensity within its context.
Conclusions:
- Distinct neural systems likely process absolute pain intensity and context-dependent rank.
- Context influences value-based decisions about pain at higher processing levels.
- This model may explain pain perception in somatization disorders.
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