The Concept of Contexts in Pain: Generalization of Contextual Pain-Related Fear Within a de Novo Category of Unique Contexts

Self-reported pain-related fear and expectancy of painful outcome in response to a context associated with unpredictable pain generalizes to perceptually distinct contexts that are trained to be conceptually similar to the unpredictable pain context. Category-level generalization may be a pathway contributing to spreading of fear and avoidance in chronic pain.