Intrinsic cognitive mechanisms are involved in the occurrence and development of chronic painful conditions, thus posing great challenges to the evaluation and prediction of chronic pain using simple objective measures. Preattentive processing may play an important role in those underlying cognitive mechanisms of pain, affecting pain sensation, response and development. However, the exact magnitudes and mechanisms of these effects remain unclear. Using behavioral, electrophysiological and neuropharmacological methods, the current project seeks to investigate the influences of various pain states on preattentive processing indexed by the mismatch negativity (MMN) in human subjects and animal models. Studies are designed to examine the relevance of MMN to pain states, pain experiences and treatment outcomes. Possible central sites and receptors involved and the role of neural networks for preattentive processing in those phenomena will be analyzed as well. These studies may elucidate the interaction between pain and preattentive processes, evaluate the predictive ability of preattentive processing for the occurrence, development, and treatment outcomes of chronic pain, and further identify the critical influencing factors and neural mechanisms of the above-mentioned effects. The results will not only lead to a bet
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