Cognitive biases in pain: an integrated functional-contextual framework.

TL;DR: This work aims to demonstrate the efforts towards in-situ applicability of EMT in the context of clinical practice and to provide a basis for future research in this area.

Abstract: 1 Section Experimental Health Psychology, Clinical Psychological Science, Departments, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, the Netherlands 2 Institute for Health and Behaviour, INSIDE, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg 3 Department of Psychology, University of Calgary; Alberta Children’s Hospital Research Institute; Hotchkiss Brain Institute; Canada 4 Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway University of London, United Kingdom 5 School of Psychology, University of Sydney, Australia 6 Department of Experimental Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University, Belgium

Summary

1. Introduction

• A revolution in biology has occurred as a result of recent advances in molecular biology, a field of science concerned with the study of chemical structures and processes of biological phenomenon at the molecular level.
• As molecular biology has great influence in the studies of marine ecosystems, it becomes important to review how molecular tools can be applied for the advances in the marine sciences.
• Sequencing total genomes of many organisms is a rapidly advancing research area.

2.1. Marine microbiology

• Marine microbes have defined the chemistry of the oceans and atmosphere over evolutionary time (Redfield, 1958).
• Molecular approach has also been used to detect the genes responsible for the production of different enzymes in marine bacteria (Ramaiah et al., 2000a and 2000b).
• Environmental genomics is also revealing bacterial interactions with marine animals, and its influences on animal populations and ecosystem function (Thakur and Müller, 2005).
• This project demonstrated that shotgun sequencing provides a wealth of phylogenetic markers that can be used to assess the phylogenetic diversity of a sample with more power than conventional PCRbased rRNA studies allow (Venter et al., 2004).
• In the study of environmental microbiology, DNA microarray technology has also been introduced.

2.2. Marine invertebrate biology

• Most of the animal phyla are either exclusively or predominantly marine but these organisms are not investigated extensively from their biological point of view.
• Researchers are concentrating on few marine model organisms like sponges, corals, sea urchins, tunicates etc. to study their biological features.
• Some interesting results are emerging (Davidson et al., 2003).
• Microarray studies have been carried out to investigate development in Urochordate, as this group represents a quite simple model to study gene networks when compared with vertebrates (Azumi et al., 2003a).

2.3. Marine ecology

• The genetic tools have shown to be of great significance in addressing novel questions in the fields of ecology.
• Marine organisms, in general, have not been studied as extensively as their terrestrial counterparts, although studies of marine organisms have made major contributions to their fundamental understandings of ecological factors such as keystone species, predation and competition (Molecular biology in marine science, 1994).
• Marine biologists have led the study of ecological interactions for several decades, but molecular techniques have been introduced recently in this field giving significant advances in their comprehension of complex systems of modes of action.
• Understanding the control of spatial and temporal distributions of marine organisms is becoming increasingly important as the authors attempt to determine how natural and humancaused environmental changes affect population sizes, extinction and invasion of new species.
• The applications of different molecular tools in the field of marine ecology have been discussed by several researchers (Burton, 1996; Rocha-Olivares, 1998).

2.4 Marine natural products

• Marine organisms comprise approximately half of the total biodiversity on the earth and the marine ecosystem is the greatest source to discover useful therapeutics (Blunt et al., 2005; Faulkner, 2002).
• The presence or absence of fragments, resulting from changes in recognition sites, is used to identify species or populations.
• Several researchers have successfully isolated polyketide biosynthetic genes from marine bacteria and fungi, which have been cloned, sequenced and expressed in heterologous hosts.
• Efforts are underway to identify, analyze and express a set of genes present in the genome of marine organism that encodes a chain of enzymes, which ultimately synthesize the bioactive compounds.

2.5. Material sciences

• Biosilicification, the biological formation of opal-like amorphous hydrated silica, occurs on a globally vast scale in a wide variety of organisms, including diatoms, sponges, molluscs, and higher plants (reviewed in Bäuerlein, 2004).
• Siliceous sponges are unique among silica forming organisms in their ability to catalyze silica formation using a specific enzyme termed silicatein (reviewed in Weaver and Morse 2003).
• Silica is also an important material in nano (bio)technology.

2.6 Fisheries

• Genome studies of different commercially important fish and the genetic variability of their populations has been reviewed earlier (Molecular biology in marine science, 1994).
• Such information is essential for effective management of oceanic fish populations.
• These studies demonstrate the promise of molecular techniques for addressing questions that were previously difficult to answer.
• The identification of essentially self-recruiting populations as units for fisheries management is a prerequisite for the conservation and sustainable utilization of fish biodiversity.
• Novel genetic technologies involving the use of DNA based tools are also under development for a range of aquaculture species.

2.7. Conservation and bio-invasion

• Molecular markers provide valuable information on the status and the significance of endangered species and populations, and thus are vital for the identification of conservation priorities (Haig, 1997).
• Numbers of molecular and quantitative genetics approaches have been combined to investigate and protect endangered marine species.
• Marine bioinvasion is the introduction of marine organisms alien to local ecosystem through ship hulls and ballast water.
• This process has serious consequences to native biota, fishery and general coastal ecosystem (Anil et al., 2002).
• For the reliable monitoring of ships ballast, specific nested PCR-based tests for detection of the harmful species in environmental and ballast water samples have been developed recently (Deagle et al., 2003).

2.8. Biofouling and bioremediation

• Characterization of biofilm structure using molecular approaches offer considerable potential for finding novel biofouling prevention strategies.
• These problems include catastrophic spills of oil in harbors and shipping lanes and around oil platforms; movement of toxic chemicals from land, through estuaries, into the coastal oceans; disposal of sewage sludge, bilge waste, and chemical process wastes, etc.
• During the last decades, major advances have been made in understanding the mechanisms of interactions between microorganisms and pollutants and in the application of specialized microorganisms for the in situ and ex situ treatment of organic xenobiotics, heavy metal and oil.
• Molecular biological methods for the identification and characterization of bacteria and their specific properties have been used to assess the composition and activity of microbial communities at contaminated sites (Geets et al., 2003).
• Molecular biology has great impact in the analysis of environmental quality as well.

3. Summary and outlook

• Marine molecular biology is a discipline, which strives to define and solve the problems regarding the sustainable exploitation of marine life for human health and welfare, through the cooperation between scientists working in marine biology, molecular biology, microbiology and chemistry.
• Such collaboration is now going on successfully in several laboratories world wide.
• Several pioneering success stories of the application of molecular techniques in the field of marine biology are guiding further research in this area.
• A mechanism is also needed to promote collaborative partnership of academic marine scientists with private industry and to permit appropriate research findings on marine organisms to be transferred rapidly to the private sector for commercialization.

Frequently asked questions

Q1. What are the contributions mentioned in the paper "Cognitive biases in pain: an integrated functional-contextual framework" ?

In this paper, the authors present a survey of the state of the art in Experimental Health Psychology and Clinical Psychological Science. 

Q2. What can be done to improve the understanding of cognitive biases in daily life?

80,86 Manipulating the features of active goals and the context (e.g., safe vs. dangerous; controllable vs. uncontrollable; stressful vs. relaxed) during the assessment of cognitive biases for pain will provide a better understanding of the dynamic nature of cognitive biases in daily life. 

Q3. What is the future of cognitive bias research?

The future research agenda for cognitive bias researchAdopting an integrated functional-contextual framework to explain the presence, direction, and dynamics of cognitive biases brings exciting new research avenues, as well as important methodologicalof pain. 

Q4. What is the way to assess cognitive biases in everyday life?

although examining single biases is valuable for understanding the exact phenomenon it provides only one piece of the larger puzzle to explain higher levels of pain and disability and increased risk for developing chronic pain. 

Q5. What is the reason for the heterogeneity between studies?

This heterogeneity may be partly due to task parameters, such as stimuli (e.g., sensory vs. affective pain words13,78) or instructions (selfreferent vs other-referent instructions58).