Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Pain promotes protective behavior but can interfere with other biologically important goals. Survival may require overcoming pain to obtain rewards, secure resources or escape danger, yet evidence for pain modulation by competing demands and endogenous modulatory systems during goal pursuit is lacking. We developed a paradigm in which participants chose whether to pursue monetary rewards despite painful heat stimulation during fMRI, under placebo or opioid receptor blockade with naloxone. Actively pursuing motivational goals during painful stimulation reduced perceived pain and increased fMRI signal in pain-modulatory cortical regions, including multiple subregions of the rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, alongside enhanced rACC-periaqueductal gray coupling, consistent with recruitment of the descending pain modulatory system. Behavioral and neural effects were attenuated by naloxone, supporting a mediating role for endogenous opioids. These findings provide convergent evidence that active goal pursuit engages opioidergic pain modulatory mechanisms to reduce pain in humans.
Institution: University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7204957825