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A11 – The role of aberrant extinction and reinstatement in somatic pain

Ulrike Bingel, Katarina Forkmann

Project A11 will investigate neural and behavioral mechanisms underlying the acquisition, extinction and reinstatement of pain-related fear in the context of somatic pain. We will compare patients suffering from chronic low back pain to healthy controls using a differential fear conditioning paradigm with painful heat as unconditioned stimuli (US) while collecting behavioral, physiological, neuroendocrine and neural data (MRI). The planned studies will examine (1) pain-specific aspects of fear conditioning, (2) the effects of pharmacologically induced stress on extinction recall and reinstatement and (3) neural common and distinct neural mechanisms underlying appetitive and aversive conditioning in the context of somatic pain.

Guiding questions of A11:

  • Do behavioral and neural mechanisms of acquisition, extinction and reinstatement of CS-US associations differ between somatic pain stimuli and equally aversive auditory stimuli? Are these pain-specific effects enhanced in chronic low back pain patients?
  • Does the systemic application of the glucocorticoid hydrocortisone impair the memory for extinguished fear of pain? Is this effect augmented in patients suffering from chronic low back pain?
  • Do learning and extinction mechanisms differ between cues predicting pain relief and cues predicting pain exacerbation? What are the commonalities and distinctions between aversive and appetitive learning in the context of pain?
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Ulrike Bingel

Ulrike Bingel

Projektleiterin A11

Universität Duisburg-Essen

Katarina Forkmann

Katarina Forkmann

Projektleiterin A11

Universität Duisburg-Essen

Frederik Schlitt

Frederik Schlitt

Doktorand A11

Universität Duisburg-Essen

Katharina Schmidt

Katharina Schmidt

Postdoc A11

Universität Duisburg-Essen

10 project-relevant publications

Bingel U, Rose M, Glascher J, Buchel C (2007) fMRI reveals how pain modulates visual object processing in the ventral visual stream. Neuron. 55: 157-167.

Bingel U, Wanigasekera V, Wiech K, Ni Mhuircheartaigh R, Lee MC, Ploner M,Tracey I (2011) The effect of treatment expectation on drug efficacy: imaging the analgesic benefit of the opioid remifentanil. Sci Transl Med. 3: 70ra14.

Eippert F, Bingel U, Schoell E, Yacubian J, Buchel C (2008) Blockade of endogenous opioid neurotransmission enhances acquisition of conditioned fear in humans. J Neurosci. 28: 5465-5472.

Eippert F, Bingel U, Schoell ED, Yacubian J, Klinger R, Lorenz J, Buchel C (2009) Activation of the opioidergic descending pain control system underlies placebo analgesia. Neuron. 63: 533-543.

Forkmann K, Wiech K, Ritter C, Sommer T, Rose M, Bingel U (2013) Pain-specific modulation of hippocampal activity and functional connectivity during visual encoding. J Neurosci. 33: 2571-2581.

Forkmann K, Wiech K, Sommer T, Bingel U (2015) Reinstatement of pain-related brain activation during the recognition of neutral images previously paired with nociceptive stimuli. Pain. 156: 1501-1510.

Kessner S, Wiech K, Forkmann K, Ploner M, Bingel U (2013) The effect of treatment history on therapeutic outcome: an experimental approach. JAMA Intern Med. 173: 1468-1469.

Labrenz F, Icenhour A, Schlamann M, Forsting M, Bingel U,Elsenbruch S (2016) From Pavlov to pain: How predictability affects the anticipation and processing of visceral pain in a fear conditioning paradigm. Neuroimage. 130: 104-114.

Schmidt K, Forkmann K, Sinke C, Gratz M, Bitz A, Bingel U (2016) The differential effect of trigeminal vs. peripheral pain stimulation on visual processing and memory encoding is influenced by pain-related fear. Neuroimage. 134: 386-395.

Schwarze U, Bingel U,Sommer T (2012) Event-related nociceptive arousal enhances memory consolidation for neutral scenes. J Neurosci. 32: 1481-1487.