Abstract
Pain is of evolutionary importance to human survival. However, the perception of pain could be changed when death-related thoughts are accessible. Although the influence of mortality salience (MS) on pain processing has been investigated in Westerners recently, it is unclear whether this effect is constrained by specific culture context since humans may employ cultural worldviews to defend the existence problem. The current study tested whether and how MS affected pain processing in a Chinese male sample. We primed participants with sentences indicating MS or negative affect (NA) on either of two days. Both before and after the priming, event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by painful and non-painful electrical stimulations were recorded. Results showed that pain-evoked potentials were identified as an early negative complex N60-P90-N130 and a late positivity P260. Pain-evoked N130 after MS priming was larger than that after NA priming. Meanwhile, pain-evoked P260 decreased after MS priming but not after NA priming. These findings indicate that reminders of mortality affect both early sensory and late cognitive neural responses related to physical pain. Although previous studies reporting an increased effect of MS on perceived pain intensity in Westerners, we found an unchanged or possibly reduced effect in Chinese. Thus, the current work provides insight into a culture-sensitive perspective on how pain processing would be modulated when existential problem occurs.
Highlights
Pain perception and its underlying neural activities can be affected by multiple cognitive factors (Gatchel et al, 2007; Williams and Craig, 2016), including attention (Kakigi et al, 2005), memory (Eich et al, 1985), appraisal and beliefs (Wager et al, 2004)
The pain-evoked potentials were characterized by two successive negative components, i.e., the N60 (50–80 ms) and N130 (110–140 ms) over the frontal/central sites, and a positive component P90 (70–100 ms) over the posterior sites, which were followed by a whole-brain positive component P260 (180– 380 ms, peaking at 260 ms)
Since electrical stimulations were delivered to the left hand, the 4-way analyses of variances (ANOVAs) with Hemisphere as a factor revealed that larger amplitudes were observed over the right than the left frontal-central region at the N60 (F(1,17) = 25.53, p < 0.001), P90 (F(1,17) = 32.34, p < 0.001), N130 (F(1,17) = 13.00, p = 0.002), and P260 components (F(1,17) = 5.26, p = 0.035)
Summary
Pain perception and its underlying neural activities can be affected by multiple cognitive factors (Gatchel et al, 2007; Williams and Craig, 2016), including attention (Kakigi et al, 2005), memory (Eich et al, 1985), appraisal and beliefs (Wager et al, 2004). Pain perception is found to be modulated by intended self-regulation and unintended anticipation (e.g., Wager et al, 2004; Woo, et al, 2015; Zhao et al, 2017). Such cognitive modulations are thought to be related to brain activities in several areas, especially in the prefrontal cortex (Woo, et al, 2015). In situations where people are confronted with existential threat, they may re-appraise the meaning of pain This raises an important question that how mortality salience (MS) would affect pain processing
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