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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2012 Mar 1.
Published in final edited form as: Pain. 2010 Dec 13;152(3 Suppl):S49–S64. doi: 10.1016/j.pain.2010.11.010

Figure 10.

Figure 10

Chronic back pain patients report a decrease in the magnitude of their back pain during a thermal painful stimulus applied to the skin on their back. They seem to only realize this fact when they are specifically instructed to attend to their own back pain. A. Group average ratings of either the magnitude of thermal painful stimulus (red) or spontaneous fluctuations of back pain (blue), for a stimulus pattern shown below (grey) that is unpredictable in intensity and duration. Every time the stimulus is felt painful it seems to induce a decrease in spontaneous pain. B. Average stimulus pain perception (red) and spontaneous back pain perception (blue) relative to start and end of thermal stimulus (black). Rating of the stimulus intensity and back pain were done separately. C. When the back pain patients rate the stimulus, they judge the experience as unpleasant (red). But for the same stimulus when they rate their own back pain the experience is judged to be significantly more pleasant (blue). Figure adapted from [12].