PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Gordon Matthewson
AU  - Choong-Wan Woo
AU  - Marianne C. Reddan
AU  - Tor D. Wager
TI  - Cognitive self-regulation influences pain-related physiology
AID  - 10.1101/361519
DP  - 2019 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 361519
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/04/07/361519.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/04/07/361519.full
AB  - Cognitive self-regulation can shape pain experience, but its effects on autonomic responses to painful events are unclear. In this study, participants (N = 41) deployed a cognitive strategy based on reappraisal and imagination to regulate pain up or down on different trials while skin conductance responses (SCR) and electrocardiogram (ECG) activity were recorded. Using a machine learning approach, we first developed stimulus-locked SCR and ECG physiological markers predictive of pain ratings. The physiological markers demonstrated high sensitivity and moderate specificity in predicting pain across two datasets, including an independent test dataset (N = 84). When we tested the markers on the cognitive self-regulation data, we found that cognitive self-regulation had significant impacts on both pain ratings and pain-related physiology in accordance with regulatory goals. These findings suggest that self-regulation can impact autonomic nervous system responses to painful stimuli and provide pain-related autonomic profiles for future studies.