Cultural Models of Pain and Cognition

数以百万计的美国人患有慢性疼痛或其他肌肉骨骼疼痛疾病。对许多人来说，病因尚不清楚，没有明确的证据表明潜在的组织损伤，疼痛是高度相关的。对于某些形式的慢性疼痛，体育活动是一种有效的治疗工具，然而许多患者觉得运动是痛苦的。新出现的理论和证据表明，个体学会将身体的感觉编码和解释为与组织损伤有关的疼痛信号；他们给疼痛和相关的感觉赋予意义。研究者建议在一组自愿诱导疼痛和痛苦的个体中，研究赋予疼痛的意义与归因于感觉的意义的生理相关性之间的关系。该项目的目的是通过运动员来探索意义、疼痛和运动是否以及如何相互关联，并利用这些见解来推广到非运动员人群。这项研究旨在评估人类赋予世界的意义是否会影响他们在世界上的感知和表现。为此，研究者将1)采访30名耐力运动员，以了解他们对疼痛和痛苦的认知模型，然后2)利用对疼痛的文化模型的了解，开发一项在线调查，该调查将部署到运动员和非运动员中，以测试耐力运动员对身体感觉的理解是否与非运动员不同。3)在耐力运动员样本中，研究者将进一步检验运动员的意义归因是否与实际身体表现的测量相关联。这项研究将允许对运动员的意义归因和疼痛相关的理论进行测试，这可能会为非运动员人群的疼痛治疗和治疗提供更普遍的见解。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Millions of Americans suffer from chronic pain or other musculoskeletal pain disorders. For many, the etiology is not well understood, clear evidence of underlying tissue damage is not present, and the pain is highly contextual. Physical activity is an effective therapeutic tool for some forms of chronic pain, yet many sufferers feel movement is painful. Emerging theory and evidence suggest that individuals learn to encode and interpret bodily sensations as pain signals linked to tissue damage; they attach meaning to the pain and related sensations. The investigator proposes to examine the relationship between the meaning given to pain and the physiological correlates of the meaning attributed to sensation among a group of individuals for whom pain and suffering are voluntarily induced. The aim of the project is to use athletes to explore if, and how, meaning, pain, and movement are interrelated and to use those insights to generalize to non-athlete populations.This study is designed to assess if the meaning humans attribute to their world influences their perceptions and performances in the world. To do so, the investigator will 1) interview 30 endurance athletes to generate an understanding of their cognitive models of pain and suffering, and then 2) use this understanding of cultural models of pain to develop an online survey that will be deployed to athletes and non-athletes to test whether endurance athlete’s understanding of bodily sensations differs from non-athletes. Then 3) within a sample of endurance athletes, the investigator will further test whether athletes’ meaning attribution is associated with actual measures of physical performance. The study will allow a test of the theory that meaning attribution and pain are linked within athletes, which may then provide more general insights to pain treatment and therapies in a non-athlete population.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.