{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"institution":[{"name":"bioRxiv"}],"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,24]],"date-time":"2026-04-24T19:05:27Z","timestamp":1777057527692,"version":"3.51.4"},"posted":{"date-parts":[[2025,7,15]]},"group-title":"Neuroscience","reference-count":52,"publisher":"openRxiv","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2025,7,15]],"date-time":"2025-07-15T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1752537600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/www.biorxiv.org\/about\/FAQ#license"}],"funder":[{"name":"Brainstorm Program at the Robert J. & Nancy D. Carney Institute for Brain Science"},{"name":"COBRE Center for Nervous System Function","award":["NIGMS 5P20GM103645"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["NIGMS 5P20GM103645"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":[],"accepted":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,8]]},"abstract":"<jats:title>Abstract<\/jats:title>\n                <jats:p>Chronic pain is often characterized by the entrenchment of maladaptive behaviors \u2014 avoidance, inactivity, and hypervigilance \u2014 that outlast tissue damage. A central but mechanistically underspecified question is how behaviors acquired during acute pain become locked in as pain chronifies. Influential accounts, including the fear-avoidance model, suggest that behavioral patterns learned in a specific context \u2014 such as avoidance during acute injury \u2014 overgeneralize to situations where they are no longer advantageous. Whether this reflects altered learning or changes in how learned information guides decisions has remained unclear. To address this, we administered a probabilistic reinforcement learning task to 239 individuals with chronic pain, acute pain, or no pain, designed to dissociate two decision strategies: reliance on recent reinforcement history \u2014 what was reinforced in a prior context \u2014 versus global expected value \u2014 the objective worth of an option regardless of context. Learning performance was comparable across all groups, confirming intact associative learning. However, groups differed significantly in decision-making: individuals with chronic pain favored options with stronger context-dependent reinforcement history over those with higher global expected value; however, those without pain showed no preference for one over the other, with the acute pain group showing an intermediate pattern. Computational modeling confirmed this, with chronic pain patients showing significantly reduced weighting toward global expected value. Critically, this shift tracked pain duration rather than intensity \u2014 suggesting prolonged pain exposure gradually biases decisions away from global expected value towards a context-dependent history. These findings offer a computational explanation for behavioral persistence in chronic pain, and this duration-dependent shift, already evident in the acute pain group, may represent an early cognitive signature of chronification.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1101\/2025.07.09.663993","type":"posted-content","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,7,16]],"date-time":"2025-07-16T08:00:20Z","timestamp":1752652820000},"source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":2,"title":["Computational Signatures of Pain Chronification: Duration-Dependent Decision-Making Shifts Across Acute and Chronic Pain"],"prefix":"10.64898","author":[{"given":"Chad C.","family":"Williams","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Robert J. and Nancy D. Carney Institute for Brain Science, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA"},{"name":"Department of Psychology, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Lucy L.W.","family":"Owen","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Robert J. and Nancy D. Carney Institute for Brain Science, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA"},{"name":"Department of Computer Science, University of Montana, Missoula, MT, USA"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Chloe Z.","family":"Gunsilius","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Robert J. and Nancy D. Carney Institute for Brain Science, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Matthew R.","family":"Nassar","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Robert J. and Nancy D. Carney Institute for Brain Science, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA"},{"name":"Department of Neuroscience, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Frederike H.","family":"Petzschner","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Robert J. and Nancy D. 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