Pain perception and its modulation are fundamental to human learning and adaptive behavior. This study investigated the hypothesis that pain perception is tied to pain's learning function. Thirty-one participants performed a threat conditioning task where certain cues were associated with a possibility of receiving a painful electric shock. The cues that signaled potential pain or safety were regularly changed, requiring participants to continually establish new associations. Using computational models, we quantified participants' pain expectations and prediction errors throughout the task and assessed their relationship with pain perception and electrophysiological responses. Our findings suggest that subjective pain perception increases with prediction error, that is, when pain was unexpected. Prediction errors were also related to physiological nociceptive responses, including the amplitude of nociceptive flexion reflex and electroencephalography markers of cortical nociceptive processing (N1-P2-evoked potential and gamma-band power). In addition, higher pain expectations were related to increased late event-related potential responses and alpha/beta decreases in amplitude during cue presentation. These results further strengthen the idea of a crucial link between pain and learning and suggest that understanding the influence of learning mechanisms in pain modulation could help us understand when and why pain perception is modulated in health and disease.

中文翻译：

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疼痛反映了伤害性输入的信息价值。

疼痛感知及其调节是人类学习和适应性行为的基础。这项研究调查了疼痛感知与疼痛学习功能相关的假设。三十一名参与者执行了一项威胁条件反射任务，其中某些线索与遭受痛苦电击的可能性相关。表示潜在疼痛或安全的线索会定期改变，要求参与者不断建立新的关联。使用计算模型，我们量化了参与者在整个任务中的疼痛预期和预测误差，并评估了他们与疼痛感知和电生理反应的关系。我们的研究结果表明，主观疼痛感知随着预测误差的增加而增加，也就是说，当疼痛是意外的时候。预测误差还与生理伤害性反应有关，包括伤害性屈曲反射的幅度和皮质伤害性处理的脑电图标记（N1-P2 诱发电位和伽马带功率）。此外，较高的疼痛预期与晚期事件相关电位反应的增加以及提示呈现期间α/β幅度的降低有关。这些结果进一步强化了疼痛与学习之间关键联系的观点，并表明了解学习机制对疼痛调节的影响可以帮助我们理解健康和疾病中疼痛感知何时以及为何受到调节。