Investigating self-report and neuropsychological assessments of cognitive flexibility in people with and without persistent pain: An online, cross-sectional, observational study.

Introduction: People with persistent pain experience problems modifying their cognition and behaviours when task or environmental demands change - abilities otherwise known as . However, limitations and inconsistent results of previous studies raise concerns over the quality of that evidence. We aimed to determine whether people with and without persistent pain differ on two assessments that are commonly used to assess cognitive flexibility.

Rapid adaptation of predictive models during language comprehension: Aperiodic EEG slope, individual alpha frequency and idea density modulate individual differences in real-time model updating.

Predictive coding provides a compelling, unified theory of neural information processing, including for language. However, there is insufficient understanding of how predictive models adapt to changing contextual and environmental demands and the extent to which such adaptive processes differ between individuals. Here, we used electroencephalography (EEG) to track prediction error responses during a naturalistic language processing paradigm.

EEG and behavioral correlates of attentional processing while walking and navigating naturalistic environments.

The capacity to regulate one's attention in accordance with fluctuating task demands and environmental contexts is an essential feature of adaptive behavior. Although the electrophysiological correlates of attentional processing have been extensively studied in the laboratory, relatively little is known about the way they unfold under more variable, ecologically-valid conditions. Accordingly, this study employed a 'real-world' EEG design to investigate how attentional processing varies under increasing cognitive, motor, and environmental demands.

Where is my arm? Investigating the link between complex regional pain syndrome and poor localisation of the affected limb.

Background: Anecdotally, people living with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) often report difficulties in localising their own affected limb when it is out of view. Experimental attempts to investigate this report have used explicit tasks and yielded varied results.

Methods: Here we used a limb localisation task that interrogates implicit mechanisms because we first induce a compelling illusion called the Disappearing Hand Trick (DHT).

The effect of multisensory illusions on pain and perceived burning sensations in patients with Burning Mouth Syndrome: A proof-of-concept study.

Background: Burning mouth syndrome (BMS) is a chronic pain disorder affecting the oral cavity. Previous work has shown promising analgesic results of bodily illusions in other chronic pain conditions. The aim of this proof-of-concept, pilot study was to investigate whether bodily illusions reduce pain in BMS patients.

The disappearing hand: vestibular stimulation does not improve hand localisation.

Background: Bodily self-consciousness depends on the coherent integration of sensory information. In addition to visual and somatosensory information processing, vestibular contributions have been proposed and investigated. Vestibular information seems especially important for self-location, but remains difficult to study.

Was That Painful or Nonpainful? The Sensation and Pain Rating Scale Performs Well in the Experimental Context.

In experiments on pain, participants are frequently exposed to nonpainful and painful stimuli; however, the conventional pain-rating scales lack a nonpainful range and a clear point of transition from nonpainful to painful events. The Sensation and Pain Rating Scale (SPARS) assesses the full stimulus intensity range, extending from no sensation (rating: -50) to worst pain imaginable (rating: +50), and it explicitly identifies pain threshold (rating: 0). Here, we tested the SPARS in 2 experiments by using laser heat stimuli to establish its stimulus-response characteristics (Experiment 1, N = 19, 13 stimulus intensities applied 26 times each across a 1-4 J range), and compared it to 0 to 100 scales that assess nonpainful (0: no sensation, 100: pain) and painful (0: no pain, 100: worst pain imaginable) events (Experiment 2, N = 7, 9 stimulus intensities applied 36 times each across a 1.

The parietal cortex and pain perception: a body protection system.

Pain is a very relevant function for our survival and its alteration leads to important consequences for people's lives. In the last decades, researchers have started to investigate pain from a neurocognitive and neuropsychologic perspective, showing some important similarities and differences with other cognitive and perceptual functions. The complexity of pain perception, due to its multicomponential nature, has led to the need to interpret pain within a multisensory frame of reference.

Multisensory modulation of experimentally evoked perceptual distortion of the face.

Background: Chronic oro-facial pain patients often perceive the painful face area as "swollen" without clinical signs, that is a perceptual distortion (PD). Local anaesthetic (LA) injections in healthy participants are also associated with PD.

Objective: The aim was to explore whether PD evoked by LA into the infraorbital region could be modulated by adding mechanical stimulation (MS) to the affected area.

Integrating Self-Localization, Proprioception, Pain, and Performance.

The ability to know where our own body and body parts are in space is often taken for granted, yet it is of fundamental importance for the majority of our everyday activities, let alone high performance activities such as dancing. This review focuses on the concept of self-localization, the monitoring of the space surrounding one's body, and the disruptions that occur in the presence of pain. A conceptual model is presented of the cortical body matrix with which to consider self-localization; also provided are its historical context, underlying assumptions, and current limitations.

Applying Current Concepts in Pain-Related Brain Science to Dance Rehabilitation.

Dance involves exemplary sensory-motor control, which is subserved by sophisticated neural processing at the spinal cord and brain level. Such neural processing is altered in the presence of nociception and pain, and the adaptations within the central nervous system that are known to occur with persistent nociception or pain have clear implications for movement and, indeed, risk of further injury. Recent rapid advances in our understanding of the brain's representation of the body and the role of cortical representations, or "neurotags," in bodily protection and regulation have given rise to new strategies that are gaining traction in sports medicine.

Relative contributions of spatial weighting, explicit knowledge and proprioception to hand localisation during positional ambiguity.

When vision and proprioception are rendered incongruent during a hand localisation task, vision is initially weighted more than proprioception in determining location, and proprioception gains more weighting over time. However, it is not known whether, under these incongruency conditions, particular areas of space are also weighted more heavily than others, nor whether explicit knowledge of the sensory incongruence (i.e.

Pain by Association? Experimental Modulation of Human Pain Thresholds Using Classical Conditioning.

Unlabelled: A classical conditioning framework is often used for clinical reasoning about pain that persists after tissue healing. However, experimental studies demonstrating classically conditioned pain in humans are lacking. The current study tested whether non-nociceptive somatosensory stimuli can come to modulate pain thresholds after being paired with painful nociceptive stimuli in healthy humans.

No Telescoping Effect with Dual Tendon Vibration.

The tendon vibration illusion has been extensively used to manipulate the perceived position of one's own body part. However, findings from previous research do not seem conclusive sregarding the perceptual effect of the concurrent stimulation of both agonist and antagonist tendons over one joint. On the basis of recent data, it has been suggested that this paired stimulation generates an inconsistent signal about the limb position, which leads to a perceived shrinkage of the limb.

Neural representations and the cortical body matrix: implications for sports medicine and future directions.

Neural representations, or neurotags, refer to the idea that networks of brain cells, distributed across multiple brain areas, work in synergy to produce outputs. The brain can be considered then, a complex array of neurotags, each influencing and being influenced by each other. The output of some neurotags act on other systems, for example, movement, or on consciousness, for example, pain.

The effect of bodily illusions on clinical pain: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

This systematic review and meta-analysis critically examined the evidence for bodily illusions to modulate pain. Six databases were searched; 2 independent reviewers completed study inclusion, risk of bias assessment, and data extraction. Included studies evaluated the effect of a bodily illusion on pain, comparing results with a control group/condition.

Untangling visual and proprioceptive contributions to hand localisation over time.

Previous studies showed that self-localisation ability involves both vision and proprioception, integrated into a single percept, with the tendency to rely more heavily on visual than proprioceptive cues. Despite the increasing evidence for the importance of vision in localising the hands, the time course of the interaction between vision and proprioception during visual occlusion remains unclear. In particular, we investigated how the brain weighs visual and proprioceptive information in hand localisation over time when the visual cues do not reflect the real position of the hand.