Year of Publication


Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Document Type

Master's Thesis


Arts and Sciences



First Advisor

Dr. Charles R. Carlson

Second Advisor

Dr. Craig S. Miller


Self-regulation is the capacity to exert control over cognition, emotion, behavior, and physiology. Since chronic pain interferes with the ability to self-regulate, the primary goal of this study was to examine, in rodents, the effects of chronic pain on self-regulation processes. Sixteen male Sprague-Dawley rats were divided into two groups: (1) chronic constriction injury of the infraorbital nerve (CCI-ION) and (2) naïve. Testing confirmed that CCI-ION animals had significant mechanical allodynia compared to naïve animals (p<0.001). A two-part self-regulation behavioral paradigm consisting of a cued go/no-go task and a subsequent persistence task was developed based on human paradigms. In the cued task, both groups made fewer incorrect lever presses in post-surgery trials (p<0.001); naive animals had a greater decrease in number of incorrect presses than CCI-ION animals (p=0.06). Similarly, both groups had a larger correct to total lever presses ratio in post-surgery trials (p<0.001); naïve animals had a greater increase than CCI-ION animals (p=0.06). In the persistence task, naïve animals experienced a greater decrease in lever presses (p=0.08) than did CCI-ION animals (p=0.66). These results suggest that animals experiencing chronic pain were not able to learn as well as naïve animals, and may have difficulty responding to novel environmental demands.