European journal of pain : EJP
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Pain and reward have been suggested to interact, and some evidence is provided by a rodent study showing that acutely injured animals are more motivated to reach a food reward while they do not increase food consumption, pointing at unaltered reward liking. Since no data exist in humans, we conducted a psychophysical experiment to test the effects of experimentally induced tonic pain on (1) the motivation to receive reward and (2) hedonic responses when being rewarded. ⋯ Similar to existing rodent data, our results suggest a pain-induced mismatch of increased motivational drive with a lack of increased hedonic responses. This mismatch is discussed as perhaps reflecting a failed coping attempt, which is potentially relevant for chronic pain patients.