The Role of Chronic Pain Location on Facial Emotion Recognition V 1.0
Research type
Research Study
Full title
The Role of Chronic Pain Location on Facial Emotion Recognition. Does the Location of Pain Matter?
IRAS ID
338125
Contact name
Abraham Rafael Lomeña-Calero
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Teesside University
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
https://osf.io/6yzrc, Open Science Framework (OSF Preregistration)
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 6 months, 1 days
Research summary
Facial Emotion Recognition (FER), i.e., the ability to identify others’ emotions from their facial expressions, is essential for effective communication and social interaction. Recent research has demonstrated that individuals with persistent orofacial pain (OFP) show impairments in FER. This has been mostly associated with the Cortical Processing of Emotions (CPE) hypothesis, which argues that persistent pain can lead to difficulties in processing emotions. However, there is an increasingly relevant explanatory model called the Cortical Motor Processing (CMP) hypothesis. This hypothesis highlights that people with OFP might have reduced facial expressions to avoid pain intensification, which leads to impairments in recognising those facial expressions in others. Previous research has predominantly investigated this phenomenon attending to either the CPE or the CMP hypothesis separately. However, investigating both hypotheses in the same study is important because it would increase the current understanding of the nature of impairments in FER in individuals with OFP.
This study will replicate the research from Von Piekartz et al. (2015), which found that people with orofacial pain had increased difficulties in FER in comparison with people without chronic pain. An important addition to our study is the inclusion of a group of participants with non-facial chronic pain. Recruiting three study samples (orofacial pain, non-facial pain, and no chronic pain) will allow us to explore the potential role of the location of pain on difficulties in FER, and to investigate whether these difficulties are related to impairments in emotional processing, motor processing, or both.
Participants will undergo two tasks exploring their ability to identify facial expressions, with and without emotional processing. Moreover, the study will ask participants to complete two questionnaires that measure the presence of low mood, and difficulties in processing feelings, i.e., alexithymia. In addition, participants will complete a survey containing demographic and relevant information for the study. Participation in the study is completely online and it is expected to require 30 minutes approximately to complete all tasks.
REC name
North West - Greater Manchester South Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
24/NW/0182
Date of REC Opinion
30 May 2024
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion