Shuangyi Tong

The paper investigates how tonic pain modulates phasic pain-predictive cues using a virtual-reality paradigm and EEG, finding that tonic pain reconfigures internal representations of pain associations.

The paper tests the hypothesis that phasic and tonic pain serve distinct functions in adaptive behavior using a virtual reality foraging task with EEG measurements.

This study shows that the Pavlovian fear system enables flexible and efficient exploratory decision-making by balancing safety and efficiency through uncertainty-based avoidance.