The effects of experimental pain on episodic memory and its top-down modulation: a preregistered pooled analysis.

Introduction: Pain can automatically interfere with ongoing cognitive processes such as attention and memory. The extent of pain's negative effects on cognitive functioning seems to depend on a balance between top-down and bottom-up factors.

Objectives: In this large, preregistered, pooled reanalysis of 8 studies, we investigated the robustness of the detrimental effect of acute pain on recognition memory and whether top-down mechanisms such as pain-related expectations or cognitions (pain-related fear, pain catastrophizing) modulate this effect.

Setting the stage for pain relief: how treatment setting impacts interdisciplinary multimodal pain treatment for patients with chronic back pain.

While interdisciplinary multimodal pain treatment (IMPT) is an effective treatment option for chronic low back pain, it is usually accomplished as an inpatient treatment incurring substantial healthcare costs. Day hospital IMPT could be a resource-saving alternative approach, but whether treatment setting is associated with differences in treatment outcomes has not yet been studied. In a retrospective matched cohort study including data from N = 595 patients diagnosed with chronic back pain and undergoing IMPT at the back pain center in Essen, Germany, we investigated the association between treatment setting (ie, inpatient or day patient of an otherwise identical IMPT) and pain intensity, disability, and self-efficacy after treatment.

An externally validated resting-state brain connectivity signature of pain-related learning.

Pain can be conceptualized as a precision signal for reinforcement learning in the brain and alterations in these processes are a hallmark of chronic pain conditions. Investigating individual differences in pain-related learning therefore holds important clinical and translational relevance. Here, we developed and externally validated a novel resting-state brain connectivity-based predictive model of pain-related learning.

Side-effects are often a curse. Can they also be a blessing?

This scientific commentary refers to ‘How side effects can improve treatment efficacy: a randomized trial’ by Schenk . (https://doi.org/10.