The role of opioidergic neurotransmission in learning to control pain

• Applicant: Dr. Christian Sprenger
• Subject Area: Human Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience
• Term: from 2016 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 321190958

Pain is a complex experience that is in addition to sensory characteristics shaped by emotional and cognitive factors, and also by learning processes. The degree to which pain is perceived to be controllable is an important contextual variable, having a determining influence on the behavioral and neuronal response to a given noxious stimulus. Although an involvement of opioidergic neurotransmission in the effects associated with controllability of pain has been hypothesized based on animal studies long since, this has not been investigated in humans so far. Within the context of the present application neuronal mechanisms in connection with learned active controllability of pain will be investigated and the specific contribution of endogenous opioidergic neurotransmission to the involved processes will be identified. This research question is going to be explored in a new experimental paradigm that compares instrumental learning of pain relief in an avoidance conditioning task with passive Pavlovian learning of pain relief in otherwise fully matched test conditions. The contribution of opioidergic neurotransmission is going to be tested by employing the non-selective opioid-receptor antagonist naloxone in a randomized double-blind between-group design. The contributing neuronal mechanisms will be investigated employing functional magnetic resonance imaging and will be analyzed with Computational Modeling and multivariate techniques. The project thus makes an important contribution to understanding the role of active controllability in the context of instrumental learning mechanisms involved in pain and the concerned neurotransmitter systems.

• DFG Programme: Research Fellowships
• International Connection: United Kingdom
• Host: Dr. Ben Seymour