Our findings provide evidence that pain-related autonomic responses are modulated by expectations, even in a state of heightened sympathetic arousal, such as after experimentally-induced sensitization in healthy participants. In the context of clinical assessments, this implies that caution is warranted when interpreting unprocessed pain-related autonomic signals, such as SCR amplitudes, as surrogate markers of central sensitization.
Allmendinger et al. (Sun,) studied this question.