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

每天，当我们执行自愿的体力和脑力任务时，比如爬楼梯或解决复杂的谜题，我们感觉到了努力。对努力的感知与自愿行为相关，有助于形成代理感，并提供有关个人行为感知成本的关键信息。有趣的是，当我们感觉到痛苦时，我们日常生活的任务变得更费力(或更难)，这似乎是显而易见的，但这一假设还没有得到调查。这项拟议的工作使用多学科方法来理解疼痛如何影响认知、身体和双重任务中的表现和努力感知。第一个目标将检验这一假设，即在存在疼痛的情况下认知和身体表现的保持是由于资源分配的增加，这反映在感知到的努力的增加(子项目1，由首席研究员PI监督的本科生执行，由一名博士生指导)。第二个目标是测试这一假设，即在认知和身体表现过程中，在疼痛存在的情况下，对努力的感觉增加与皮质脊髓兴奋性的变化有关(子项目2，由PI指导的理科学生执行)。第三个目标将是确定在认知和身体表现过程中参与感知努力的大脑网络，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及其具有大脑激活和网络测量和分析经验的博士生共同指导执行)。研究费用包括每年一次完整的i)理科荣誉研究奖学金，ii)理学硕士奖学金和iii)博士奖学金。方法的复杂性与每个次级项目所涉及的HPQ是一致的。分项目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。出于这些原因，这两个子项目将成为博士和硕士研究奖学金的资金支柱。提出的多学科方法是独一无二的，因为它调查了努力的结构及其跨域(心理和身体)的感知。这项拟议的工作将通过提供对这种知觉的新见解来促进对努力知觉的基础神经科学，这种知觉涉及：i)在目标导向任务背景下的行为自我调节；ii)在疲劳存在时表现下降的情况下。由于之前没有研究调查疼痛对绩效的负面影响可能通过其对努力感知的影响来中介，因此该项目有助于更好地理解面对疼痛是如何使自愿任务变得更加困难。这项拟议的工作有很大潜力开辟新的研究路线，以更好地了解疼痛是如何影响表现的。

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.