ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2012
Pain relief produces negative reinforcement through activation of mesolimbic reward-valuation circuitry.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 197 papers.
What it found
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The trial behind it
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Who cites it
197 citing papers in PubMed, 310 citations in OpenAlex.
- Trial
- The altered right frontoparietal network functional connectivity in migraine and the modulation effect of treatment.Cephalalgia : an international journal of headache · 2017Trial
- From tooth pain to trigeminal sensitization: translational models, experimental readouts, and mechanism-guided therapeutic opportunities in odontogenic and headache-related orofacial pain.The journal of headache and pain · 2026Review
- Counterfactual relief.Memory & cognition · 2026Article
- Place preference in a female adolescent rat model of neuropathic pain: The effects of cannabidiol and oxycodone on cerebellum cell density.Psychopharmacology · 2026Article
- A top-down neural circuit for affective-motivational responses of pain relief induced by electroacupuncture.Chinese medicine · 2026Article
- Calves disbudded with local nerve block and analgesic show conditioned place aversion two days later but not in the hours post-disbudding.Animal welfare (South Mimms, England) · 2026Article
- TMEM251 loss-induced autophagy dysfunction in the anterior cingulate cortex contributes to chronic postoperative pain.EMBO reports · 2026Article
- Behavioral assessment of pain in rodents: advances from evoked responses to spontaneous states and multimodal approaches.Frontiers in pain research (Lausanne, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Dysregulation of Hedonic Processing in Chronic Pain: Insights from Preclinical Data.Brain sciences · 2025Review
- Withdrawal-Induced Delirium in Opioid Dependence: A Systematic Review.Brain sciences · 2025Review
- Functional connectivity between the nucleus accumbens and amygdala underlies avoidance learning during adolescence: Implications for developmental psychopathology.Development and psychopathology · 2025Article
- Aged mice exhibit faster acquisition of intravenous opioid self-administration with variable effects on intake.Neuropharmacology · 2025Article
- Methylphenidate as a Novel Adjunct in Opioid-Taking Patients: Insights into Dopaminergic Neuroadaptation and Hypoactive Delirium.Brain sciences · 2025Review
- Serotonin release mediates analgesia via opioidergic system and withdrawal symptoms in chronic kratom extract-treated mice.BMC complementary medicine and therapies · 2025Article
- Sex and Strain Differences in Analgesic and Hyperlocomotor Effects of Morphine and μ-Opioid Receptor Expression in Mice.Journal of neuroscience research · 2025Article
- Diminished reward circuit response underlies pain avoidance learning deficits in problem drinkers.NeuroImage. Clinical · 2025Article
- Network analysis of depressive symptoms in Chinese outpatients with somatic symptom disorder.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Article
- Internet-based cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia comorbid with chronic benign pain - A randomized controlled trial.Internet interventions · 2024Article
- Pain Resilience and Coping Behaviors in Individuals in a Collectivist Social Context.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
137 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
10 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Relief of pain is rewarding. Using a model of experimental postsurgical pain we show that blockade of afferent input from the injury with local anesthetic elicits conditioned place preference, activates ventral tegmental dopaminergic cells, and increases dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens. Importantly, place preference is associated with increased activity in midbrain dopaminergic neurons and blocked by dopamine antagonists injected into the nucleus accumbens. The data directly support the hypothesis that relief of pain produces negative reinforcement through activation of the mesolimbic reward-valuation circuitry.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.