WOULD you rather have more pain now, or less pain within the next minute? If you go for the second option, you are a 鈥渕oderate dreader鈥�: you don鈥檛 get particularly anxious about upcoming unpleasantness. If you鈥檇 rather get it over with, you are an 鈥渆xtreme dreader鈥�, willing to take more pain now to avoid the agony of a delay.
Gregory Berns of the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia, scanned the brains of 32 volunteers while delivering electric shocks to their feet. The researchers first delivered 96 shocks, varying the waiting time before each shock and its intensity. Next the team gave their volunteers the choice of waiting for each shock, or getting it over with.
Some 84 per cent preferred to get the shocks over with quickly. Of those people, 28 per cent dreaded the delays so much that they were willing to endure stronger shocks simply to avoid the wait (Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1123721).
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Functional MRI showed that the participants who dreaded the shocks most had significantly more activity in the pain processing regions of their brain such as the posterior insula. These regions are also thought to influence attention.
Berns says distracting people before a medical procedure might lessen their feelings of dread.
