Pain and pleasure are powerful motivators of behaviour and have historically been
considered opposites. Emerging evidence from the pain and reward research fields points to …

… μ-opioids and oxytocin, underpinning the seemingly opposite stimulatory and soothing
effects of touch, and propose how these outcomes are highly dependent on the individual’s …

… Nor do we attempt to weigh pain’s positive consequences against its many (well documented)
negative consequences. Our main aim here is simply to document the “other side” of pain. …

BACKGROUND: Depressed mood alters the pain experience. Yet, despite its clear clinical
relevance, little is known about the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying this …

… In the ‘liking’ task, participants viewed each face for 5 s before … preset viewing time of each
face (5 s) by pressing buttons to keep … to S Leknes from the Research Council of Norway. …

… in a subset of regions within the brain’s pain network [1] . We … To assess whether these
regions of the brain’s pain network … For a more complete understanding of the role of the brain’s …

… squares straight line fitting, with sigma = 50.0 s). Input stimulus functions were defined for each
… the gamma HRF (mean lag 6 s and full-width-at-half-height 6 s) to yield regressors for the …

… The human touch stimuli used in this study were characterized by slow (around 5 cm/s)
gentle strokes that are optimal for activating C-tactile (CT) afferents (Löken et al., 2009). CT …

… Our results point to mechanisms that could underpin oxytocin’s prosocial effects in humans.
Importantly, individual differences in baseline emotional sensitivity predicted oxytocin’s …

… on a screen outside the scanner bore for 6 s every 30 s. Subjects could view this screen from
… Ratings were obtained every 30 s throughout the experiment. We did not record continuous …