{"id":8727,"date":"2022-05-26T18:50:01","date_gmt":"2022-05-26T22:50:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qprn.ca\/2022\/05\/attenuer-la-douleur-par-la-pensee\/"},"modified":"2025-05-21T11:46:24","modified_gmt":"2025-05-21T15:46:24","slug":"attenuer-la-douleur-par-la-pensee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qprn.ca\/en\/2022\/05\/26\/attenuer-la-douleur-par-la-pensee\/","title":{"rendered":"When thinking reduces pain"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

goal<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Zoha Deldar and her team aimed to test how the amount of information processed during a cognitive task affects pain. Examples of cognitive tasks are those that require thinking for example, selecting an option among different alternatives or staying focused on a certain task. The research team also examined the communication between the brain and the spinal cord during the tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

methodology<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For this project, 38 healthy volunteers performed a cognitive task (n-back) for which the amount of information was different depending on group allocation (2-back or 3-back). Participants had to discriminate between bleu and yellow squares with more or less information to remember (0-back and 2-back or 0-back and 3-back). In the 0-back condition, participants discriminated the color of the current stimulus immediately after its presentation. In the 2-back and 3-back conditions, they reported the color of the stimulus presented 2 or 3 trials before, respectively. Pain and a withdrawal reflex were evoked by electrical stimulation at the ankle. The withdrawal reflex reflects spinal cord activity and how the brain blocks pain messages sent to the brain. Participants had to rate their pain after each condition between 0-100.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

main findings<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Pain was decreased by cognition, and more so when it involved more information to process 2\/3-back vs 0-back. This effect partly depended on the communication between the brain and spinal cord. It was also observed that too much information (3-back) was not more beneficial at blocking pain, suggesting that there is a limit to this ability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
This painting illustrates that we can feel more pain when our attention is focused on pain (left side of figure, in red). When we focus on a task and get distracted from pain, pain may decrease (right side of figure\/ in blue). This art work is created by Melika Abbasi for this project (this artwork has a right\/permission to share for non-commercial purposes).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

take home message<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Cognition can decrease pain through communication between the brain and spinal cord. These findings may guide the development of non-pharmacological cognitive-based interventions for pain management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Access to the full article<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

goal Zoha Deldar and her team aimed to test how the amount of information processed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":9675,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[38],"class_list":["post-8727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-popularized-publications","tag-articles-en"],"acf":[],"views":190,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qprn.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qprn.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qprn.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qprn.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qprn.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qprn.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qprn.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qprn.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qprn.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qprn.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}