The relationship between behavioural and mood responses to monetary rewards in a sample of students with and without reported pain

Abstract

AbstractPain impairs reward processing, and people suffering from physical pain are at high risk of having a persistently low mood. Although individuals with chronic pain have reported reduced reward responsiveness and impaired mood, it is not clear if reward responsiveness and mood are impaired in samples with sub-clinical pain scores otherwise healthy. Investigating a sub-clinical group is essential to disentangle the influence of medication on the behavioural effect of reward on mood and performance. Here, we aimed to examine the effects of reward on mood and performance in a sample of university students divided into a control group without clinically significant pain symptoms (N = 40) and the sub-clinical group with significant pain symptoms (N = 39). We used the Fribourg reward task and the pain sub-scale of the Symptom Checklist (SCL-27-plus) to assess the physical symptoms of pain. A significant positive correlation was found between average mood ratings and average monetary reward in the control group (r38 = 0.42, p = 0.008) and not significant in the sub-clinical group (r37 = 0.12, p = 0.46). The results might yield first insights into the relationship between pain and reward in sub-clinical populations without the confound of medication.