Increased Emotional-motivational Processing in Patients with Chronic Pain and Its Neural Correlates
CompletedNot applicableNCT05257356
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This study has no listed site in Canada in this snapshot. It is included as part of the worldwide chronic pain corpus.
Brief summary (from the registry)
Chronic pain causes immense suffering and reductions in quality of life as well as enormous socioeconomic costs. Very many chronic pain patients fall into the category of unspecific pain, i.e. pain without clear medical explanation, with lacking effective treatments. It is assumed that a negative hedonic shift, characterized by excessive emotional-motivational processing and neg-ative affect, contributes causally to the development and maintenance of chronic pain. The mechanisms leading to such a shift are largely unclear; however, learning mechanisms appear likely candidates, possibly causing decreased connectivity in the fronto-striatal brain circuits. The project's over-all aim is to characterize mechanisms of emotional-motivational pain pro-cessing. The specific objectives are to illustrate that emotional-motivational pain components are heightened in chronic pain and that they can be de-creased by counterconditioning as an important and pervasive mechanisms in everyday life. Furthermore, its neural correlates in fronto-striatal networks underlying the conditioning effects will be characterized.
Study details
- Official title
- Increased Emotional-motivational Processing in Patients with Chronic Pain and Its Neural Correlates
- Conditions
- Interventions
- Behavioral: psychophysical tasks
- Sponsor
- susanne becker
- Collaborators
- Swiss National Science Foundation
- Organization
- Balgrist University Hospital
- Start date
- 2022-04-06
- Primary completion
- 2024-04-05
- Sex
- All
- Age range
- from 18 Years to 70 Years
- Healthy volunteers
- true
- Results posted
- No results posted in this snapshot
- Countries
- Switzerland
- Total sites listed
- 1
Eligibility criteria
Show eligibility criteria (verbatim from the registry)
HEALTHY PARTICIPANTS Inclusion criteria: * Between 18 and 70 years of age (in Substudy 1: age- and sex-matched to chronic pain patients) * Good overall health status * Sufficient knowledge of German or English to follow instructions * Ability to give written informed consent Exclusion criteria: * Pain longer than \>3 consecutive days and on more than 30 days within the last 12 months * Major psychiatric or neurological disorders, and substance abuse * Consumption of alcohol, illegal drugs, and analgesic drugs within 24 hours before testing * Pregnancy * For Substudy 2: An MR-specific safety questionnaire will be filled in to check for any contradiction to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI): wearing an electronic device, implants or prosthetics, injury from metal parts or fragments, metal parts in or on the body, surgery on the head, heart or back, tattoo or permanent makeup, problems lying still for long periods of time, claustrophobia, possible pregnancy, metal contraceptive coil CHRONIC PAIN PATIENTS Inclusion criteria: * Between 18 and 70 years of age * Unspecific musculoskeletal pain as defined according to the ICD-11 as chronic primary pain (MG30.1, e.g. chronic widespread pain, complex regional pain syndrome, chronic primary headache or orofacial pain, chronic migraine, chronic tension-type headache, trigeminal autonomic cephalalgias, burning mouth syndrome, chronic primary visceral pain, irritable bowel syndrome, chronic primary musculoskeletal pain), and which is not classified as chronic cancer related pain (MG30.2; e.g. chronic cancer pain, chronic post-cancer treatment pain), chronic postsurgical or post traumatic pain (MG30.3; e.g. chronic postsurgical pain, chronic posttraumatic pain), chronic secondary musculoskeletal pain (MG30.4; e.g. chronic musculoskeletal pain from persistent inflammation, chronic musculoskeletal pain associated with structural changes, chronic musculoskeletal pain associated with a disease of the nervous system), chronic secondary visceral pain (MG30.5; e.g. chronic visceral pain from persistent inflammation, chronic visceral pain from vascular mechanisms, chronic visceral pain from mechanical factors), chronic neuropathic pain (MG30.6; e.g. chronic peripheral neuropathic pain, trigeminal neuralgia, postherpetic neuralgia, chronic central neuropathic pain), chronic secondary headache or orofacial pain (MG30.7; e.g. chronic dental pain, chronic neuropathic orofacial pain, trigeminal neuralgia, headache or orofacial pain at…
Source: ClinicalTrials.gov (US National Library of Medicine), snapshot October 2026. Check the registry for current recruiting status. Record: https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT05257356