Exposure to false cardiac feedback alters pain perception and anticipatory cardiac frequency (opens in new tab)

The experience of pain, like other interoceptive processes, has recently been conceptualized in terms of predictive coding and free energy frameworks. In these views, the brain integrates sensory, proprioceptive, and interoceptive signals to generate probabilistic inferences about upcoming events, which shape both the state and the perception of our inner body. Here, we ask whether it is possible to induce pain expectations by providing false faster (vs. slower) acoustic cardiac feedback befo...