Trial reportEuropean journal of pain (London, England)2019
General versus pain-specific cognitions: Pain catastrophizing but not optimism influences conditioned pain modulation.
Trial report in European journal of pain (London, England), 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 45 citations in OpenAlex.
- Pooled it
- Psychophysical predictors of experimental muscle pain intensity following fatiguing calf exercise.PloS one · 2021Trial
- General versus pain-specific cognitions: Pain catastrophizing but not optimism influences conditioned pain modulation.European journal of pain (London, England) · 2019Trial
- Baseline vagal tone and pain reactivity: linking autonomic function to endogenous pain inhibition in women.Pain reports · 2026Article
- Reliable Biomarkers of Descending Pain Inhibition: A Laser-Evoked Potential and Behavioural Study.European journal of pain (London, England) · 2026Article
- Development and validation of the PrePain questionnaire for predicting pain.Scientific reports · 2025Observational
- Identifying Psychosocial, Self-Management, and Health Profiles Among Women With Chronic Pain Who Have Experienced Intimate Partner Violence and Those Who Have Not: Protocol for a 2-Phase Qualitative and Cross-Sectional Study Using AI Techniques.JMIR research protocols · 2025Article
- Experimental Pain Sensitivity and Parental Pain Catastrophizing.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Spatial summation of pain is associated with pain expectations: Results from a home-based paradigm.PloS one · 2024Article
- Strong and aversive cold processing and pain facilitation in fibromyalgia patients relates to augmented thermal grill illusion.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- The effect of induced optimism on early pain processing: indication by contact heat evoked potentials (CHEPs) and the sympathetic skin response (SSR).Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2023Article
- Positive, but not negative, treatment outcome expectancies mediate the relation between depressive symptoms and treatment-related pain reduction.Journal of behavioral medicine · 2023Article
- Factors Associated with Low Inter-Session Reliability of Conditioned Pain Modulation in Older People with or Without Chronic Musculoskeletal Pain.Journal of pain research · 2023Article
- Symptomatic but not Asymptomatic COVID-19 Impairs Conditioned Pain Modulation in Young Adults.The journal of pain · 2022Article
- Article
- The Relationship Between Psychological Resilience and Pain Threshold and Tolerance: Optimism and Grit as Moderators.Journal of clinical psychology in medical settings · 2021Article
- Conditioned Pain Modulation (CPM) Effects Captured in Facial Expressions.Journal of pain research · 2021Article
- Understanding Pain Catastrophizing: Putting Pieces Together.Frontiers in psychology · 2020Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundPrevious studies found evidence that dispositional optimism is related to lower pain sensitivity. Recent findings suggest that temporarily increasing optimism by means of imagining a positive future may also have pain-alleviating effects.
objectivesThe present experiment was designed to investigate conditioned pain modulation (CPM) as a potential underlying mechanism of this pain-alleviating effect of induced optimism.
methodsFor this purpose, 45 healthy participants were randomized into an optimistic or neutral imagery condition. Additionally, participants completed questionnaires on dispositional optimism, pain catastrophizing and pain expectations. CPM was assessed by delivering a series of five heat pain stimuli on the nondominant hand before and during immersion of the dominant hand in water of 5°C for 70 s.
resultsA clear CPM effect was found, that is heat pain reports were lower during simultaneous cold water stimulation. Although the optimism manipulation successfully increased optimism, it did not affect pain ratings or CPM. Post hoc analyses indicated that dispositional optimism was not associated with the magnitude of CPM, but pain catastrophizing and pain expectations did significantly correlate with the CPM effect.
conclusionPain-specific but not general cognitions appear to influence endogenous pain modulation. SIGNIFICANCE: Conditioned pain modulation is not the underlying mechanism of the pain-alleviating effects of induced optimism. However, pain-specific cognitions including pain catastrophizing and pain expectations affect endogenous pain modulation which should be taken into account in treatment and CPM research.
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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.