Sad mood increases pain sensitivity upon thermal grill illusion stimulation: Implications for central pain processing

The newly developed device induced thermal grill sensations similar to those reported in the literature. Induction of sad, but not neutral mood states, resulted in higher pain and unpleasantness ratings of the painful illusion. These findings might be of importance for the understanding of pain processing in healthy volunteers, but putatively even more so in patients with major depressive disorder. Moreover, our results might indicate that central nervous structures involved in the affective domain or cognitive domain of pain processing might be involved in the perception of the illusion.