Researchers from East China Normal University and Wake Forest School of Medicine, US, investigated how our expectations shape our subjective experiences. In simpler terms, the role of expectations in modulating our brain’s response to pain.
Positive expectations can enhance our enjoyment of positive experiences, while negative expectations can amplify discomfort or pain.
“Expectations shape our perception and profoundly influence how we interpret the world,” the researchers wrote in the study. “Positive expectations about sensory stimuli can relieve distress and reduce pain (e.g., placebo effect), whereas negative expectations may increase anxiety and worsen pain (e.g., negative addiction effect).”
The study recruited 47 participants, 24 of whom liked spicy foods and 22 did not like them.
While undergoing fMRI scans, participants tasted hot sauce and completed tasks.
The researchers evaluated the participants’ neural and behavioral reactions to the taste of hot sauce.
Parts of the brain associated with pleasure, information processing, and the placebo effect lit up in people who said they liked hot and spicy foods, and in many cases, the hotter the spice, the greater the intensity of the pleasure.
Brain regions included the insular cortex, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex.
This was not the case for the brains of those who do not like hot spices, as their pain centers lit up when they ate hot sauce in the experiments. The experience of pain increased significantly when the participant knew that he or she would get the hotter sauce.
Thus, negative expectations activated regions associated with pain and emotion, reducing pleasure and increasing neural activity in the pain neuronal signature network.
“I was surprised by how strongly negative expectations amplified the brain’s response to pain, even though the stimulus was the same,” said study lead author Yi Luo, from the School of Psychology and Cognitive Science at East China Normal University in Shanghai. “This highlights how our anticipation of discomfort can dramatically intensify the experience of pain.”
These findings demonstrate the powerful influence our expectations have on how we perceive and experience the world. It suggests that positive and negative expectations have distinct effects on our brains.
The results were published in the journal PLOS Biology.
Source: Interesting Engineering
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