Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London, London, UK.
Department of Psychology, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience, King's College London, London, UK.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2018 Nov 8;13(11):1121-1130. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsy085.
Pain is modulated by social context. Recent neuroimaging studies have shown that romantic partners can provide a potent form of social support during pain. However, such studies have only focused on passive support, finding a relatively late-onset modulation of pain-related neural processing. In this study, we examined for the first time dynamic touch by one's romantic partner as an active form of social support. Specifically, 32 couples provided social, active, affective (vs active but neutral) touch according to the properties of a specific C-tactile afferent pathway to their romantic partners, who then received laser-induced pain. We measured subjective pain ratings and early N1 and later N2-P2 laser-evoked potentials (LEPs) to noxious stimulation, as well as individual differences in adult attachment style. We found that affective touch from one's partner reduces subjective pain ratings and similarly attenuates LEPs both at earlier (N1) and later (N2-P2) stages of cortical processing. Adult attachment style did not affect LEPs, but attachment anxiety had a moderating role on pain ratings. This is the first study to show early neural modulation of pain by active, partner touch, and we discuss these findings in relation to the affective and social modulation of sensory salience.
疼痛受社会环境调节。最近的神经影像学研究表明，在疼痛期间，伴侣可以提供一种有力的社会支持形式。然而，此类研究仅关注被动支持，发现与疼痛相关的神经加工的相对迟发性调节。在这项研究中，我们首次研究了伴侣的动态触摸作为一种主动的社会支持形式。具体来说，32 对伴侣根据特定 C 触觉传入途径的特性向其伴侣提供社交、主动、情感（相对于主动但中性）触摸，然后让他们接受激光引起的疼痛。我们测量了主观疼痛评分以及早期 N1 和晚期 N2-P2 激光诱发的电位 (LEP) 对有害刺激的反应，以及成人依恋风格的个体差异。我们发现，来自伴侣的情感触摸可降低主观疼痛评分，并同样减弱早期 (N1) 和晚期 (N2-P2) 皮质处理阶段的 LEP。成人依恋风格不会影响 LEP，但依恋焦虑对疼痛评分有调节作用。这是第一项研究表明主动、伴侣触摸可早期调节疼痛的研究，我们讨论了这些发现与感觉显著性的情感和社会调节的关系。
