
Pierre RainvilleUniversité de Montréal | UdeM · Department of Stomatology
Pierre Rainville
PhD, Experimental Neuropsychology
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223
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Introduction
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November 2000 - present
Publications
Publications (223)
Anxiety, pain and poor well-being are major issues in older people. Complementary interventions, such as music and hypnosis, are increasingly used to address these issues. The objectives of this study were to assess immediate changes in anxiety, pain and well-being during personalized pre-recorded music and hypnosis interventions compared to contro...
Pain is a private experience observable through various verbal and non-verbal behavioural manifestations, each of which may relate to different pain-related functions. Despite the importance of understanding the cerebral mechanisms underlying those manifestations, there is currently limited knowledge of the neural correlates of the facial expressio...
Virtual reality (VR) and hypnosis (H) are useful pain management tools, but the potential benefit of their combination (VRH) has yet to be studied. This study examines the user experience of VRH, compared to H and VR alone, using interviews following an experimental study examining the effect of the three interventions on pain perception. Following...
Hypnotic phenomena exhibit significant inter-individual variability, with some individuals consistently demonstrating efficient responses to hypnotic suggestions, while others show limited susceptibility. Recent neurophysiological studies have added to a growing body of research that shows variability in hypnotic susceptibility is linked to distinc...
Pain is a private experience observable through various verbal and non-verbal behavioural manifestations, each of which may relate to different pain-related functions. Despite the importance of understanding the cerebral mechanisms underlying those manifestations, there is currently limited knowledge on the neural correlates of the facial expressio...
Generally, pain invokes net inhibitive effects on motor command transmission (Chowdhury et al., 2022) and increases resource demand (Vogel et al., 2020). Thus, pain is expected to increase the perception of effort at a set task intensity (Norbury et al., 2022a) or reduce the perceived value to invest effort for continued task engagement (Richter et...
Introduction: We explored trajectories of pain intensity and depressive symptoms over the first 24 months of the pandemic in people with low back pain.
Methods: This longitudinal study was conducted alongside the Quebec Low Back Pain Study. Starting in April 2020 and every 3 months until July 2022, 291 participants completed an online survey. Group...
Pain perception and its modulation are fundamental to human learning and adaptive behavior. This study investigated the hypothesis that pain perception is tied to pain's learning function. Thirty-one participants performed a threat conditioning task where certain cues were associated with a possibility of receiving a painful electric shock. The cue...
Introduction: Up to 50% of community-dwelling older adults report living with some chronic pain that interferes with their daily functioning and leads to disabilities. Hence, it is crucial to provide these individuals with strategies to effectively manage pain. An interdisciplinary approach is warranted considering the numerous factors contributing...
Introduction
Approximately one-quarter of Canadians experience chronic pain, a debilitating condition often necessitating opioid use, which raises concerns regarding dependency and overdose risks. As an alternative, we developed the HYlaDO program (Hypnose de la Douleur, hypnosis of Pain in French), a novel self-hypnosis approach for chronic pain m...
Background
Stress can have paradoxical effects on pain, namely hyperalgesia and hypoalgesia. Four situational characteristics activate the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis, leading to a physiological stress response: lacking Sense of control, social-evaluative Threat, Unpredictability and Novelty (STUN). This scoping review reports on the types...
How well a person responds to hypnosis is a stable trait, which exhibits considerable inter-individual diversity across the general population. Yet, its neural underpinning remains elusive. Here, we address this gap by combining EEG data, multivariate statistics, and machine learning in order to identify brain patterns that differentiate between in...
Background: Nearly a quarter of Canada’s population suffers from chronic pain, a long-lasting medical condition marked by physical pain and psychological suffering. Opioids are the primary treatment for pain management in this condition; yet, this approach involves several undesirable side effects. In contrast to this established approach, non-phar...
Pain is a private experience observable through various verbal and non-verbal behavioural manifestations. Despite the importance of understanding the cerebral mechanisms underlying those manifestations, there is currently limited knowledge on the neural correlates of facial expression of pain. Here, we applied a brain decoding approach to functiona...
Pain perception and its modulation are fundamental to human learning and adaptive behavior. This study investigated the hypothesis that pain perception is tied to pain's learning function. Thirty-one participants performed a threat conditioning task where certain cues were associated with a possibility of receiving a painful electric shock. The cue...
Affective states are typically accompanied by facial expressions, but these behavioral manifestations are highly variable. Even highly arousing and negative valent experiences, such as pain, show great instability in facial affect encoding. The present study investigated which neural mechanisms are associated with variations in facial affect encodi...
Introduction: Effort is the voluntary engagement of physical and cognitive resources to perform or attempt to perform in a task. According to the motivational intensity theory, effort directly influences performance. When task difficulty increases, effort should be increased to maintain performance. As pain is proposed to increase task demand, to m...
Including suppl. materials
This chapter highlights the importance of evidence-based studies and practices in clinical hypnosis education and training in academia. It emphasizes that such programs must be based on evidence, integrating from diverse research to the possibilities of practical application. This study underscores the importance of studying recent models of hypnos...
PURPOSE: The perception of effort (PE) is widely used to prescribe and monitor exercise during locomotor and resistance tasks. The present study examines the validity of PE to prescribe and monitor exercise during upper-limb motor tasks under various loads and speed requirements.
METHODS: Forty participants volunteered in two experiments. In exper...
Objective:
The COVID-19 pandemic and its associated public health measures may increase the risk for psychological distress among vulnerable older adults. This longitudinal study aimed to identify predictors of psychological distress trajectories among community-dwelling older adults in Quebec, Canada.
Methods:
The study spanned four time points...
Background
The perception of effort provides information on task difficulty and influences physical exercise regulation and human behavior. This perception differs from other-exercise related perceptions such as pain. There is no consensus on the role of group III/IV muscle afferents as a signal processed by the brain to generate the perception of...
Observing pain in others facilitates self-pain in the observer. Vicarious pain facilitation mechanisms are poorly understood. We scanned 21 subjects while they observed pain, fear and neutral dynamic facial expressions. In 33% of the trials, a noxious electrical stimulus was delivered. The nociceptive flexion reflex (NFR) and pain ratings were reco...
Objective : This project aimed to train nurses on an oncology unit in hypnotic communication to reduce treatment-related pain and anxiety in their patients. A pilot study was conducted to assess changes in hypnotic communication behaviors associated with the training.
Methods : Nurses were recruited and their interactions during a simulated patient...
Contact sports athletes are regularly facing acute physical pain in part of their sport; however, the literature investigating pain perception in these athletes remains scarce. This scoping review aimed to explore the literature surrounding pain perception in contact sport athletes and to compile and understand how it is studied. The search strateg...
Introduction: Conversational hypnosis (CH) is known to optimize the management of symptoms resulting from antineoplastic treatment. However, the perception of nurses who have been called upon to integrate this practice into their care has yet to be documented. Goal: Describe how nurses perceive the integration of CH into chemotherapy-related care....
Introduction : L’hypnose conversationnelle (HC) est connue pour optimiser la gestion des symptômes liés aux traitements antinéoplasiques. Toutefois, la perception des infirmières qui ont dû intégrer cette pratique dans leurs soins n’a encore jamais été documentée. But : Décrire la perception des infirmières quant à l’intégration de l’HC aux soins e...
Background
The palliative care people present needs that can be partially met by complementary intervention. Approaches based on the use of hypnosis and music are increasingly being studied and have shown potential benefits on pain, anxiety, and wellbeing for many populations including those in palliative care.Objective
This study aims to present t...
The brain evolved to govern behavior in a dynamic world, in which pertinent information about choices is often in flux. Thus, the commitment to an action choice must reflect a balance between monitoring that information and the necessity to act before opportunities are lost. Here, we investigate the mechanisms of dynamic decision-making in humans u...
Significance
We often willingly experience pain to reach a goal. However, potential pain can also prevent reckless action. How do we consider future pain when deciding on the best course of action? To date, the precise neural mechanisms underlying the valuation of future pain remain unknown. Using functional MRI, we derive a whole-brain signature o...
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) minimum dataset for chronic low back pain (CLBP) was developed in response to the challenge of standardizing measurements across studies. Although reference values are critical in research on CLBP to identify individuals and communities at risk of poor outcomes such as disability, no reference values have bee...
La douleur chronique est un problème majeur de santé publique, touchant un·e Canadien·ne sur quatre, majoritairement des femmes. L'étude vise à documenter les effets de la pandémie sur les individus vivant de la douleur chronique selon le genre et explorer les attentes de rôles de genre liées à la douleur en lien avec l'interférence de douleur. Les...
Chronic pain is a major health problem, afflicting one in four Canadians, with more women living with chronic pain. The study aims at documenting the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic among individuals living with chronic pain depending on gender and at exploring gender role expectations of pain in relation to pain interference. Participants (N = 49...
Pain becomes a socially constructed experience when it is expressed to others. Several psychosocial factors can affect how one interprets another's pain. One of the elements that has been little studied is the position of an individual in the social hierarchy, a concept that is nevertheless central to social interactions. The main goal of this stud...
Background
Maintaining quality of life is a primary goal of palliative care (PC). Complementary interventions can help meet the needs of patients at the end of life.
Objectives
This meta-analysis aims to (1) evaluate the feasibility, acceptability and fidelity of music and hypnosis interventions designed for patients in PC and (2) evaluate the imp...
Objective
To explore a personalized musical intervention's effect on burden of care during dental implants placement.
Methods
Randomized Controlled Trial in 24 dental implant surgery patients. A personalized music intervention (Music Care© application) or an audiobook control condition was administered. Burden of care (a composite outcome includin...
This systematic review and meta-analysis aims to identify and quantify the current available evidence of hypnosis efficacy to manage pain in patients with chronic musculoskeletal and neuropathic pain. Randomized Control Trials (RCTs) with hypnosis and/or self-hypnosis treatment used to manage musculoskeletal and/or neuropathic chronic pain in adult...
Background Maintaining quality of life is a primary goal of palliative care (PC). Complementary interventions can help meet the needs of patients at the end of life. Objectives This meta-analysis aims to 1) evaluate the feasibility, acceptability, and fidelity of music and hypnosis interventions designed for patients in PC; 2) evaluate the impact o...
Purpose
This pilot-controlled trial aimed to examine the feasibility and acceptability of hypnosis-derived communication (HC) administered by trained nurses during outpatient chemotherapy to optimize symptom management and emotional support — two important aspects of patient well-being in oncology.
Methods
The trial was conducted in two outpatient...
Contact sports athletes are regularly facing acute physical pain in part of their practice. However, the literature investigating pain perception in these athletes remains scarce. This scoping review aimed to explore the literature surrounding pain perception in contact sport athletes and to compile and understand how it is studied. The search stra...
BACKGROUND:
The perception of effort (PE) provides information on task difficulty and influences physical exercise regulation and human behavior. This perception differs from other-exercise related perceptions such as pain. There is no consensus on the role of group III-IV muscle afferents as a signal processed by the brain to generate PE.
OBJECT...
Background: The effectiveness of hypnosis in reducing pain is well supported by the scientific literature. Hypnosis typically involves verbal suggestions but the mechanisms by which verbal contents are transformed into predictive signals to modulate perceptual processes remain unclear. We hypothesized that brain activity during verbal suggestions w...
Background
In order to decide between avoiding pain or pursuing competing rewards, pain must be assigned an abstract value that can be traded against that of competing goods. To assess the relationship between subjectively perceived pain and its value, we conducted an experiment where participants had to accept or decline different intensities of p...
Background:
We aimed to evaluate heart rate variability (HRV) changes in insulo-opercular epilepsy (IOE) and after insulo-opercular surgery.
Methods:
We analyzed 5-min resting HRV of IOE patients before and after surgery. Patients' SUDEP-7 risk inventory scores were also calculated. Results were compared with age- and sex-matched patients with t...
Aims: This study explores the association between subjective feeling of stress and pain experience in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic with a focus on characteristics known to trigger a physiological stress response [sense of low control, threat to ego, unpredictability and novelty (STUN)].
Methods: This exploratory longitudinal convergent mixe...
Background
Pain is a major public health concern in the aging population. However, medication brings about negative effects that compel healthcare professionals to seek alternative management techniques to alleviate pain. Hypnosis has been recognized as an effective technique to manage pain, but its long-term efficacy has yet to be examined in olde...
PURPOSE: The perception of effort (PE) is widely used to prescribe and monitor exercise during locomotor and resistance tasks. The present study examines the validity of PE to prescribe and monitor exercise during upper-limb motor tasks under various loads and speed requirements.METHODS: Forty participants volunteered in two experiments. In experim...
Background: Pain captures attention and interferes with competing tasks demanding cognitive effort. Brief mindfulness interventions involving both conceptual learning and meditation exercises have been shown to improve attention and reduce pain sensitivity, and could potentially reduce pain interference. This study assesses the effect of a 5-day mi...
The mechanisms underlying pain modulation by hypnosis and the contribution of hypnotic induction to the efficacy of suggestions being still under debate, our study aimed, (1) to assess the effects of identical hypoalgesia suggestions given with and without hypnotic induction, (2) to compare hypnotic hypoalgesia to distraction hypoalgesia and (3) to...
According to basic utilitarian principles, people should try to maximize rewards and minimize pain. Here, participants were put in a situation where monetary rewards were paired to electric shocks spanning between pain detection and tolerance thresholds. Monetary offers ranged linearly from $0 to $5 or $10 in Group1 and 2, respectively, and exponen...
Objective
Despite decades of research on the identification of specific characteristics of situations that trigger a physiological stress response (novelty, unpredictability, threat to the ego, and sense of low control [NUTS]), no integrative research has examined the validity of this framework applied to pain experiences. This study aimed to 1) ex...
The main function of pain is to automatically draw attention towards sources of potential injury. However, pain sometimes needs to be inhibited in order to address or pursue more relevant tasks. Elucidating the factors that influence how people manage this relationship between pain and task performance is essential to understanding the disruptive n...
Aims
To examine the efficacy of an immersive virtual reality distraction compared with an active non‐immersive distraction, such as video games on a tablet, for pain and anxiety management and memory of pain and anxiety in children requiring percutaneous bone pins and/or suture removal procedures.
Design
Three‐centre randomized clinical trial usin...
Mindfulness meditation might improve a variety of cognitive processes, but the available evidence remains fragmented. This preregistered meta-analysis (PROSPERO-CRD42018100320) aimed to provide insight into this hypothesis by assessing the effects of brief mindful attention induction on cognition. Articles were retrieved from Pubmed, PsycInfo and W...
Background and purpose:
Musculoskeletal disorders (MSKDs) are the most common causes of disabilities for older adults. The aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis is to assess the effectiveness of multimodal interventions including exercise rehabilitation for older adults with chronic MSKDs.
Methods:
A literature search was conducted up...
The exact contribution of the insula to risky decision making remains unclear, as are the specific outcome parameters and inter-individual characteristics that modulate insular activity prior to a risky choice. This fMRI study examines the contributions of outcome valence, magnitude, probability, and expected value (EV) to insular activity during r...
Facial expressions of pain are composed of a subset of pain-indicative muscle movements. Amongst this subset, contracting the muscles surrounding the eyes (orbicularis oculi muscle) is the most frequent response and has been linked specifically to pain intensity, a fundamental aspect of the sensory dimension of pain. To further explore this link, t...
Demanding tasks can influence following behaviors but the underlying mechanisms remain largely unclear. In the present functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, we used multivariate pattern analyses (MVPA) to compare patterns of brain activity associated with pain in response to noxious stimuli administered after a task requiring cognitiv...
Background
Chronic pain after moderate-to-severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) is associated with notable sensory alterations. Although the incidence of TBI is rapidly growing in older populations, elderly individuals have been largely excluded from sensory testing studies, thus limiting evidence regarding the influence of age on pain-related sensor...
Synopsis
Hypnosis is a psychological intervention that produces changes in activity within brain networks involved in vigilance, attention, and self-monitoring, and associated with modifications in subjective experience. Additional suggestions for analgesia given during hypnosis produce highly specific changes in the brain responses to acute painfu...
Purpose:
While the prevalence of pain increases with age, too much medication can lead to negative side effects. Complementary approaches, such as clinical hypnosis, could be relevant in pain management. While evidence in the literature has shown that clinical hypnosis is effective in child and adult populations, there have been few studies in agi...
Introduction:
The neurobiological mechanisms underlying recovery from or persistence of low back pain (LBP) remain misunderstood, limiting progress toward effective management. We have developed an innovative two-tier design to study the transition from acute to chronic LBP. The objective of the first tier is to create a provincial web-based infra...
The feeling of automaticity reported by individuals undergoing a hypnotic procedure is an essential dimension of hypnosis phenomenology. In the present study, healthy participants rated their subjective experience of automaticity and resting-state arterial spin labelling (ASL) scans were acquired before and after a standard hypnotic induction (i.e....
Empathy relies on brain systems that support the interaction between an observer’s mental state and cues about the others’ experience. Beyond the core brain areas typically activated in pain empathy studies (insular and anterior cingulate cortices), the diversity of paradigms used may reveal secondary networks that subserve other more specific proc...
Background
Central pain associated with changes in sensory thresholds is one of the most enduring consequences of major trauma. Yet it remains sparsely studied among community-dwelling survivors of moderate-to-severe traumatic brain injury (TBI).
Purpose
To describe and compare thermal and mechanical sensory thresholds in home-based patients with...
Background: The use of quantitative sensory testing (QST) in multicenter studies has been quite limited, due in part to lack of standardized procedures among centers.
Aim: The aim of this study was to assess the application of the capsaicin pain model as a surrogate experimental human model of neuropathic pain in different centers and verify the va...
Objective:
Mindfulness-based practice is a form of cognitive/affective training that may help reduce suffering by attenuating maladaptive anticipatory processes. This study's objective was to examine the pain modulating impact of classical fear learning in meditation practitioners.
Methods:
The hyperalgesic effects of pain expectation and uncert...
[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0189944.].
Rhythmic neuronal synchronization across large-scale networks is thought to play a key role in the regulation of conscious states. Changes in neuronal oscillation amplitude across states of consciousness have been widely reported, but little is known about possible changes in the temporal dynamics of these oscillations. The temporal structure of br...
Introduction: Sensitivity to Movement-Evoked Pain is a pain summation phenomenon identified in various chronic pain
populations.
Objectives: This study investigated the validity of a procedure used to assess pain summation in response to a repeated lifting task
in individuals with whiplash injuries.
Methods: Sixty-five participants completed measur...
Although placebo analgesia is a well-recognized phenomenon with important clinical implications, the possibility that placebo effects occur during sleep has received little attention. This experimental study examined whether responsiveness to acute heat pain stimuli applied during sleep could be reduced following a placebo conditioning procedure ad...