Modulation of pain perception and its neural basis

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Hedwig Eisenbarth
• Subject Area: Personality Psychology, Clinical and Medical Psychology, Methodology ; Clinical Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
• Term: from 2012 to 2014
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 231855708

Criminals who have committed violent acts against others often do not care about the victims¿ physical and psychological pain. Even if the victim shows significant injuries and is frightened by the offender, such criminals continue their antisocial behavior. Most individuals would behave differently. Perceived suffering in others suppresses aggressive behavior and often elicits a natural caregiving response. Previous research has shown that perceiving others in pain activates known structures related to physical pain, and that there is also an overlap between physical and emotional pain. The first goal of the proposed project is to relate this pain related activity to subsequent pro- and antisocial behavior. The second goal is to identify inter-individual differences in these processes of perception and their relation to behavior. Differences could be based on personality traits such as psychopathic traits or based on professions such as being a nurse or an emergency doctor. These aims will be pursued by two experiments using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The first will investigate correlations between neuronal activity during own and others¿ emotional and physical pain perception and pro- and antisocial behavioral parameters in a student sample (20 male, 20 female). Pro- vs. antisocial behavior will be assessed using a dictator and a prisoner dilemma game. The second experiment will include interindividual differences as possible moderators of those effects within the same set-up (three groups, 20 males each). This will include a group of medical care personal, which would be expected to be able to down-regulate responding to others¿ physical pain. Therefore, we expect this group to show reduced reactions to stimuli of physical pain in others. This group will be compared with two groups of students, one low on psychopathic traits, one high on psychopathic traits. Psychopathic traits are known to be related to reduced physiological and also behavioral responding to emotional reactions in others. Therefore, we expect the highly psychopathic group to show reduced reactions to both categories of stimuli, emotional and physical pain in others. In addition, the three groups are expected to show different relationships of their reactivity to different categories of pain stimuli and their behavior in pro- vs. antisocial behavior measuring tasks. Thus, findings of this project will increase knowledge of the power of pain related structures to modulate pro- and antisocial behavior. Results will have broad implications such as the treatment of criminal populations. Up to now, the implementation of emotion regulation training and empathy training has not been based on empirical findings. Also, if the relationship between pain processing related structures¿ activity and subsequent behavior can be demonstrated by the proposed studies, this would explain why people are influenced towards prosocial behavior as soon as they see others suffering.

• DFG Programme: Research Fellowships
• International Connection: USA
• Host: Professor Tor Wager, Ph.D.