Faculty mentor/PI email address
jim010@aol.cm
Is your research Teaching and Learning based?
1
Keywords
Procedural narration; cognitive analgesia; predictive coding; descending inhibition; emergency medicine
Date of Presentation
5-6-2026 12:00 AM
Poster Abstract
Background: Experienced emergency physicians routinely provide real-time verbal guidance during procedures. Although widespread and intuitive, this practice has not been commonly conceptualized within pain neuroscience.
Objective: To name and mechanistically ground procedural narration as a form of cognitive analgesia, and to promote its intentional use and teaching in Emergency Medicine.
Methods: Narrative review integrating predictive coding theory, placebo/nocebo research, affective neuroscience, descending inhibitory pathway literature, and attentional modulation studies.
Results: Procedural narration reduces uncertainty, aligns expectation with sensation, modulates limbic threat processing, engages prefrontal cortical regulation, and supports descending inhibitory control of nociception.
Conclusion: Procedural narration is not a novel invention but an established clinical behavior. Naming and Neurobiologically framing it enables deliberate deployment, structured teaching, and formal investigation.
Disciplines
Anesthesia and Analgesia | Medical Education | Medicine and Health Sciences | Neurosciences
Procedural Narration as an Important Cognitive Adjunct to Analgesia: Naming and Neurobiologically Grounding an Established Emergency Medicine Practice
Background: Experienced emergency physicians routinely provide real-time verbal guidance during procedures. Although widespread and intuitive, this practice has not been commonly conceptualized within pain neuroscience.
Objective: To name and mechanistically ground procedural narration as a form of cognitive analgesia, and to promote its intentional use and teaching in Emergency Medicine.
Methods: Narrative review integrating predictive coding theory, placebo/nocebo research, affective neuroscience, descending inhibitory pathway literature, and attentional modulation studies.
Results: Procedural narration reduces uncertainty, aligns expectation with sensation, modulates limbic threat processing, engages prefrontal cortical regulation, and supports descending inhibitory control of nociception.
Conclusion: Procedural narration is not a novel invention but an established clinical behavior. Naming and Neurobiologically framing it enables deliberate deployment, structured teaching, and formal investigation.