Beyond chronic pain as maladaptive: a functional- evolutionary perspective on persistent pain.

My research program tests a novel model of persistent pain under a functional-evolutionary perspective, integrating neuroscience and psychology. The idea is that pain, also when it persists, works as an adaptive dynamic smoke detector identifying dangers and guiding defensive behaviour. To test this hypothesis, I will use, in healthy volunteers, human surrogate models of persistent pain. I argue that persistent pain develops from a dynamic interplay among individual characteristics, threatening environments, and competing relevant goals. The research will: 1) define how individual differences in learning style relate to different behaviours in persistent pain; 2) characterize how and through which mechanisms supportive/unsupportive social environments modulate the development persistent pain, and why and when individuals stick to falsified negative beliefs; 3) explain how competing goals shape pain persistency.