Pain by association: A classical conditioning approach (Pain by association)

Pain syndromes are amongst the syndromes that have the highest burden on life. Confronted with

the inexplicable nature of many pains, medicine has turned to psychology for answers. In response

to this call, some researchers have proposed that pain can be learned through classical conditioning.

The frequent co-occurrence of a neutral stimulus (CS: Conditioned Stimulus) with a noxious stimulus

(UCS: Unconditioned Stimulus) that is experienced as pain (UCR: Unconditioned Response), may

after some of these pairings evoke pain as a conditioned Response (CR). The idea that pain can be

conditioned is not uncontested, but there is a huge lack of systematic research on this topic. The

current project aims (1) to systematically review available evidence on conditioned pain and other

somatosensory experiences, (2)to investigate the role of spatiotemporal contingency on

conditioned pain in healthy volunteers, and (3) to investigate whether individuals with medically

unexplained symptoms display conditioned pain.