Facing pain is effortful: a multidisciplinary approach to investigate the effects of pain on perception of effort and performance

每天，当我们自愿进行体力和脑力任务时，比如爬楼梯或解决复杂的难题，我们会感知到努力。对努力的感知与志愿行动有关，有助于主体感，并提供有关个人行动感知成本的关键信息。有趣的是，虽然很明显，当我们感知到疼痛时，我们日常生活中的任务变得更加努力（或更难），但这个假设还没有被研究过。拟议的工作使用多学科方法来了解疼痛如何影响认知，身体和双重任务期间的表现和对努力的感知。第一个目标将是检验假设，即在疼痛的存在下，认知和身体表现的保持是由于资源分配的增加，这反映在感知的努力增加（子项目1，由主要研究者（PI）监督的本科生进行，并由一名博士生指导）。第二个目标是检验以下假设：认知和身体表现期间疼痛时对努力的感知增加与皮质脊髓兴奋性的改变相关（子项目2，由硕士学生在PI的监督下进行）。第三个目标是识别在认知和身体表现期间参与努力感知的大脑网络，并描述它们与疼痛相关大脑网络的相互作用（子项目3，由PI及其合作者共同监督的博士生执行，他们具有大脑激活和网络测量和分析的经验）。研究费用包括每年一个完整的i）学士荣誉研究奖学金，ii）硕士奖学金和iii）博士奖学金。方法的复杂性与每个次级项目所涉及的HPQ相一致。次级项目1侧重于行为研究。子项目2要求HPQ掌握经颅磁刺激，子项目3要求HPQ掌握脑成像。由于这些原因，这两个子项目将成为博士和硕士研究奖学金的资助支柱。* 提出的多学科方法是独特的，因为它调查了努力的结构及其跨领域（精神和身体）的感知。拟议的工作将有助于基本的神经科学的感知的努力，提供新的见解，这种看法涉及i）在自我调节的行为的背景下，目标导向的任务和ii）在性能下降的疲劳。由于以前没有研究调查的可能性，疼痛对性能的负面影响可以通过其对努力的感知的影响进行调解，这个项目有助于更好地了解如何面对疼痛使自愿任务更难。这项工作很有可能开辟新的研究领域，以更好地了解疼痛如何影响表现。

Every day, when we perform voluntary physical and mental tasks, such as climbing the stairs or solving complex puzzle, we perceive effort. The perception of effort is associated with voluntary actions, contributes to the sense of agency, and provides crucial information on the perceived cost of personal actions. Interestingly, while it seems obvious that when we perceive pain the tasks of our everyday life become more effortful (or harder), this assumption has not been investigated.***The proposed work uses a multidisciplinary approach to understand how pain impacts performance and the perception of effort during cognitive, physical and dual tasks. The first objective will be to test the hypothesis that the preservation of cognitive and physical performance in the presence of pain is due to an increase in resource allocation that is reflected in an increased perceived effort (subproject 1, performed by undergraduate students supervised by the principal investigator -PI- and mentored by one PhD student). The second objective will be to test the hypothesis that the increased perception of effort in the presence of pain during cognitive and physical performance is associated with alterations in corticospinal excitability (subproject 2, performed by MSc students supervised by the PI). The third objective will be to identify brain networks involved in perception of effort, during cognitive and physical performance, and to characterize their interactions with pain-related brain networks (subproject 3, performed by PhD students co-supervised by the PI and his collaborators experienced with brain activations and networks measurement and analysis).***The research costs include each year one full i) BSc Honours research fellowship, ii) MSc fellowship and iii) PhD fellowship. The methodological complexity is in line with the HPQs involved in each subproject. Subproject 1 focuses on behavioural studies. Subproject 2 requires the HPQ to master transcranial magnetic stimulation, and subproject 3 requires the HPQ to master brain imaging. For these reasons, these two subprojects will be the pillar of funding for PhD and MSc research fellowships. ***The multidisciplinary approach proposed is unique as it investigates the construct of effort and its perception across domains (mental and physical). The proposed work will contribute to the basic neuroscience of perception of effort by providing new insights into this perception involved i) in the self-regulation of behaviour in the context of goal-oriented tasks and ii) in the decreased performance in the presence of fatigue. As no study previously investigated the possibility that the negative impact of pain on performance could be mediated by its impact on perception of effort, this project contributes to better understand how facing pain makes voluntary tasks harder. The proposed work has a strong potential to open new lines of research to better understand how pain impacts performance.**