Pain Uncertainty in Patients with Fibromyalgia, Yoga Practitioners, and Healthy Volunteers

2012 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-46
Author(s):  
David Bradshaw ◽  
Gary Donaldson ◽  
Akiko Okifuji
Keyword(s):  
Healthy Volunteers ◽  
Skin Conductance ◽  
Painful Stimulus ◽  
Physiological Reactivity ◽  
Subjective Ratings ◽  
High Odds ◽  
Skin Conductance Responses ◽  
Pain Ratings ◽  
Painful Events ◽  
Yoga Practitioners

Background: Uncertainty about potentially painful events affects how pain is experienced. Individuals with fibromyalgia (FM) often exhibit anxiety and catastrophic thoughts regarding pain and difficulties dealing with pain uncertainty. Objectives: The effects of pain uncertainty in predictably high odds (HO), predictably low odds (LO), and even odds (EO) conditions on subjective ratings of pain (PR) and skin conductance responses (SCR) following the administration of a painful stimulus were examined for individuals with fibromyalgia (IWFM), healthy volunteers (HVs), and yoga practitioners (YPs). We hypothesized IWFM would demonstrate the greatest physiological reactivity to pain uncertainty, followed by HVs and YPs, respectively. Methods: Nine IWFM, 7 YPs, and 10 HVs participated. Results: Custom contrast estimates comparing responses for HO, LO, and EO pain conditions showed higher SCR for IWFM (CE = 1.27, p = 0.01) but not for HVs or for YPs. PR for the EO condition were significantly greater than for HO and LO conditions for IWFM (CE = 0.60, p = 0.012) but not for HVs or YPs. YPs had lower SCR and PR than did HVs. Conclusions: Results show that uncertainty regarding pain increases the experience of pain, whereas certainty regarding pain may reduce pain ratings for individuals with fibromyalgia.

Does Personality Modulate Skin Conductance Responses to Emotional Stimuli?

2010 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 124-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Solange Mardaga ◽  
Michel Hansenne
Keyword(s):  
Skin Conductance ◽  
Recovery Time ◽  
Emotional Reactivity ◽  
Normal Subjects ◽  
Emotional Valence ◽  
Subjective Ratings ◽  
Emotional Stimuli ◽  
Emotional Responsiveness ◽  
Skin Conductance Responses ◽  
Emotional Pictures

Several studies showed that personality modulates emotional responsiveness, though most of them used subjective ratings as the measure of emotion. The present study extends personality-emotion relationship findings to psychophysiological methods, more precisely to skin conductance responses (SCRs). SCRs were recorded in 54 normal subjects following the presentation of neutral and emotional pictures. Results showed that half-recovery time was modulated by harm avoidance (HA) as a function of emotional valence: Low-HA subjects showed longer half-recovery time following the presentation of pleasant pictures relative to neutral ones, whereas high-HA subjects showed no extended half-recovery time. These results support the hypothesis that personality modulates some aspects of somatic emotional reactivity, and together with previous results, they suggest that this phenomenon is highly dependent upon the characteristics of the emotional material.

scholarly journals The devil is in the detail: The role of threat level and intolerance of uncertainty in extinction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jayne Morriss ◽  
Francesco Saldarini ◽  
Carien M. van Reekum
Keyword(s):  
Anxiety Disorder ◽  
Skin Conductance ◽  
Intolerance Of Uncertainty ◽  
Auditory Stimuli ◽  
Subjective Ratings ◽  
Potential Threat ◽  
Skin Conductance Responses ◽  
Threat Level ◽  
The Devil

AbstractRecent evidence suggests that individual differences in intolerance of uncertainty (IU) are associated with disrupted threat extinction. However, it is unknown what maintains the learned threat association in high IU individuals: is it the experienced uncertainty during extinction or the combination of experienced uncertainty with potential threat during extinction? Here we addressed this question by running two independent experiments with uncertain auditory stimuli that varied in threat level (Experiment 1, aversive human scream (n = 30); Experiment 2, benign tone (n = 47) and mildly aversive tone (n = 49)). During the experiments, we recorded skin conductance responses and subjective ratings to the learned cues during acquisition and extinction. In experiment 1, high IU was associated with heightened skin conductance responding to the learned threat vs. safe cue during extinction. In experiment 2, high IU was associated only with larger skin conductance responding to the learned cues with threatening properties during extinction i.e. mildly aversive tone. These findings suggest that uncertainty in combination with threat, even when mild, disrupts extinction in high IU individuals. Such findings help us understand the link between IU and threat extinction, and its relevance to anxiety disorder pathology.

scholarly journals Seeing pain and pleasure on self and others: behavioral and psychophysiological reactivity in immersive virtual reality

2016 ◽  
Vol 116 (6) ◽  
pp. 2656-2662 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Fusaro ◽  
G. Tieri ◽  
S. M. Aglioti
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Physiological Reactivity ◽  
Immersive Virtual Reality ◽  
Neural Responses ◽  
Subjective Ratings ◽  
Psychophysiological Reactivity ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Skin Conductance Responses ◽  
Physiological Indexes ◽  
Healthy Participants

Studies have explored behavioral and neural responses to the observation of pain in others. However, much less is known about how taking a physical perspective influences reactivity to the observation of others' pain and pleasure. To explore this issue we devised a novel paradigm in which 24 healthy participants immersed in a virtual reality scenario observed a virtual: needle penetrating (pain), caress (pleasure), or ball touching (neutral) the hand of an avatar seen from a first (1PP)- or a third (3PP)-person perspective. Subjective ratings and physiological responses [skin conductance responses (SCR) and heart rate (HR)] were collected in each trial. All participants reported strong feelings of ownership of the virtual hand only in 1PP. Subjective measures also showed that pain and pleasure were experienced as more salient than neutral. SCR analysis demonstrated higher reactivity in 1PP than in 3PP. Importantly, vicarious pain induced stronger responses with respect to the other conditions in both perspectives. HR analysis revealed equally lower activity during pain and pleasure with respect to neutral. SCR may reflect egocentric perspective, and HR may merely index general arousal. The results suggest that behavioral and physiological indexes of reactivity to seeing others' pain and pleasure were qualitatively similar in 1PP and 3PP. Our paradigm indicates that virtual reality can be used to study vicarious sensation of pain and pleasure without actually delivering any stimulus to participants' real body and to explore behavioral and physiological reactivity when they observe pain and pleasure from ego- and allocentric perspectives.

Emotions Under the Skin

2015 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 161-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catarina Silva ◽  
Ana Cláudia Ferreira ◽  
Isabel Soares ◽  
Francisco Esteves
Keyword(s):  
Attachment Style ◽  
Attachment Styles ◽  
The Other ◽  
Regulatory Function ◽  
Physiological Reactivity ◽  
Emotional Stimuli ◽  
Skin Conductance Responses ◽  
Lower Accuracy ◽  
Emotional Pictures ◽  
Valence And Arousal

Abstract. The present study examined physiological reactivity to emotional stimuli as a function of attachment style. Skin conductance responses (SCRs) and heart rate (HR) changes were simultaneously recorded while participants engaged in a visual attentional task. The task included positive, neutral, and negative emotional pictures, and required the identification of a target (neutral picture rotated 90° to the left or right), among a stream of pictures in which an emotional distracter (positive or negative) was presented. Participants additionally rated each of the emotional distracters for valence and arousal. Behavioral results on the attentional task showed that positive pictures facilitated overall target detection for all participants, compared to negative and neutral pictures, and that anxiously attached participants had significantly lower accuracy scores, relative to the other groups. Affective ratings indicated that positive pictures were rated as being more pleasant than negative ones, although no differences were found in HR changes to picture valence. In contrast, negative pictures were evaluated as being highly arousing. Consistent with this, negative pictures elicited larger SCRs in both insecure anxious and avoidant groups, especially for the anxious while the secure group showed SCRs unaffected by stimuli’s arousal. Present results show that individuals with different attachment styles reveal distinct patterns of attentional bias, appraisal, and physiological reactivity toward emotionally arousing stimuli. These findings further highlight the regulatory function of the attachment system.

Lying and perception of lies by bilingual speakers

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (05) ◽  
pp. 1313-1329 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nora Kreyßig ◽  
Agnieszka Ewa Krautz
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Skin Conductance ◽  
Emotional Response ◽  
Native Language ◽  
Reading Aloud ◽  
Emotional Valence ◽  
Bilingual Speakers ◽  
Skin Conductance Responses ◽  
English Second Language ◽  
Task Requirements

AbstractMultiple studies on bilingualism and emotions have demonstrated that a native language carries greater emotional valence than the second language. This distinction appears to have consequences for other types of behavior, including lying. As bilingual lying has not been explored extensively, the current study investigated the psychophysiological differences between German (native language) and English (second language) in the lying process as well as in the perception of lies. The skin conductance responses of 26 bilinguals were measured during reading aloud true and false statements and listening to recorded correct and wrong assertions. The analysis revealed a lie effect, that is, statistically significant differences between valid and fictitious sentences. In addition, the values in German were higher compared to those in English, in accordance with the blunted emotional response account (Caldwell-Harris & Aycicegi-Dinn, 2009). Finally, the skin conductance responses were lower in the listening condition in comparison to the reading aloud. The results, however, are treated with caution given the fact that skin conductance monitoring does not allow assigning heightened reactivity of the skin to one exclusive cause. The responses may have been equally induced by the content of the statements, which prompted positive or negative associations in the participants’ minds or by the specific task requirements.

scholarly journals Behavioral Triggers of Skin Conductance Responses and Their Neural Correlates in the Primate Amygdala

2009 ◽  
Vol 101 (4) ◽  
pp. 1749-1754 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher M. Laine ◽  
Kevin M. Spitler ◽  
Clayton P. Mosher ◽  
Katalin M. Gothard
Keyword(s):  
Skin Conductance ◽  
Single Unit ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Emotional Reaction ◽  
Neural Population ◽  
Experimental Conditions ◽  
Indirect Measure ◽  
Skin Conductance Responses ◽  
The Right ◽  
Sympathetic Arousal

The amygdala plays a crucial role in evaluating the emotional significance of stimuli and in transforming the results of this evaluation into appropriate autonomic responses. Lesion and stimulation studies suggest involvement of the amygdala in the generation of the skin conductance response (SCR), which is an indirect measure of autonomic activity that has been associated with both emotion and attention. It is unclear if this involvement marks an emotional reaction to an external stimulus or sympathetic arousal regardless of its origin. We recorded skin conductance in parallel with single-unit activity from the right amygdala of two rhesus monkeys during a rewarded image viewing task and while the monkeys sat alone in a dimly lit room, drifting in and out of sleep. In both experimental conditions, we found similar SCR-related modulation of activity at the single-unit and neural population level. This suggests that the amygdala contributes to the production or modulation of SCRs regardless of the source of sympathetic arousal.

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