Background & Aims

This study aimed to investigate the impact of engaging in intrinsically pleasant tasks, underpinned by personal passion and the flow experience, on pain modulation. Pain serves as a protective mechanism, signaling potential harm and capturing our attention. Distraction techniques can reduce pain by reallocating attentional resources. While demanding cognitive tasks such as n-back tasks have been shown to reduce pain, their inherent unpleasantness and the exertion they demand compromise their effectiveness. Conversely, tasks that are intrinsically pleasant, tied to passion, and create a flow experience (i.e., a state of complete absorption in the task linked to intrinsic rewards) may offer enhanced analgesic effects. When individuals engage in tasks that resonate with their passions, the accompanying flow experience captures shared cognitive resources, which in turn may enhance task engagement and reduce pain perception.

Methods

Two hundred healthy young adult chess enthusiasts of varying skill levels participated in this study. They engaged in five blocks of chess puzzles: easy, flow (tailored to individual Elo ratings, which is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players), and difficult (Elo score +600), as well as a 2-back task and a pain assessment block with no accompanying task while undergoing thermal pain stimulation. Post-task, participants rated pain intensity and unpleasantness (VRS 0-100) and completed game experience and flow questionnaires. They also filled out passion, personality and pain catastrophizing questionnaires.

Results

Our results revealed that solving chess puzzles significantly reduced pain intensity and unpleasantness compared to the 2-back and pain tasks (P ? 0.001). Flow experiences varied significantly across blocks, with a notable peak during flow chess puzzles (P ? 0.001). Feature importance analysis via F-score and SHAP values in XGBoost modeling revealed the “Elo score” and “Harmonious passion” as the features with the highest F-scores (66, 49), while “Importance” and “Concentration” registered the lowest ones (26, 29). Conditional independence tests were used to detect significant causal relationships among the predictive features for each task, uncovering distinct patterns across blocks.

Conclusions

This study reveals the significant role of flow and passion in pain reduction, alongside features like enjoyment and frustration. Future research should consider this effect and inter-individual differences when examining the efficacy of distraction on pain inhibition.

References

•Deldar, Z, et al, (2021). The Journal of Pain;
•Khalili-Mahani, et al (2019). JMIR serious games;
•Vogel, T. A, et al (2022). Pain reports;
•Vogel, T. A, et al (2020). Elife;
•Melnikoff, D. E, et al (2022). Nature communications;
•Csikszentmihalyi, M. et al (1990). New York: Harper & Row;
•Vallerand, R, (2015). Oxford University Press;
•Zheng, Yujia, et al. Causal-learn: Causal discovery in Python. arXiv preprint (2023).

Presenting Author

Zoha Deldar

Poster Authors

Zoha Deldar

PhD

McGill University

Lead Author

E-mail

Jerome Genzling

McGill University

Lead Author

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Roman Sarrazin-Gendron

McGill University

Lead Author

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Najmeh Khalili-Mahani

Concordia University

Lead Author

E-mail

Mathieu Roy

Dept. of Psychology, McGill University, Montreal, Qc., Can., H3A 1G1

Lead Author

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Topics

  • Novel Experimental/Analytic Approaches/Tools