Computational Modeling confirmed that people with chronic pain put less weight on global expected value and more on local reinforcement history. Such that choices are more biased towards the context in which they were learned in.

Here is what we found:
Chronic pain systematically shifts reward-based decision-making. Compared to pain-free individuals, participants with chronic pain relied more on context-specific reinforcement history and less on globally integrated expected value.

Chronic pain is known to impact decision-making.
But how exactly?
We studied 239 people - in a state of no pain, acute pain or chronic pain- using a reinforcement learning task that teases apart choices based on:
🧠 Global expected values
📍 Context-specific reinforcement history

So proud of our Chloe Gunsilius, who defended her PhD last week! Her work on #ChronicConditions and #MindBodyInteractions is bound to make a difference for patients.

This past week, I had the honor of speaking at the
Bhutan Innovation Forum and meeting Their Majesties, the King and Queen of Bhutan. It was inspiring to hear the visionary plans for the country and I'm excited to explore more of Bhutan. If you're in the area, please feel free to connect!