Association of Interoceptive Sensibility and Pain Psychophysics in Healthy Subjects and Chronic Pain Patients

Objective: Interoception is the sense of the physiological condition of the body; it results from the integration of somatic information, including pain, with visceral information. The aim of the study was to assess whether interoceptive sensibility and awareness modulate the perception of experimental pain in healthy participants and recurrent/chronic pain patients. Methods: To assess whether interoceptive sensibility and awareness modulate the effects of experimental noxious stimuli, pain-free subjects (N=52) and patients with recurrent (N= 47) and chronic pain (N= 42) underwent the following psychophysical tests: von Frey filaments (punctate mechanical threshold), pressure pain threshold, heat and cold pain threshold and tolerance, and diffuse noxious inhibitory control (DNIC). They also completed the Body Perception Questionnaire Short Form (BPQ-SF), which discriminates between sub- and supradiaphragmatic interoception, and the Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness I (MAIA I), which measures multiple dimensions of interoceptive sensibility/awareness. Results: After controlling for age and psychopharmacological treatment, a significant difference in heat pain tolerance among groups (F=3.16; p=.047; η2=.06) was found cancelled however by all BPQ dimensions and noticing of MAIA I. Conclusion: Different mechanism of experimental pain perception can be suggested in subjects with and without pain, based on the role of interoceptive sensibility.