Sensory-affective-self uncoupling

Pain is not a simple/indivisible sensation. From what I understand of the research, it distinguishes 2 (sometimes 3) dimensions: the sensory dimension and the affective-emotional dimension (sometimes the cognitive dimension). (see)

The sensory dimension encodes location, intensity, duration, etc., while the affective-emotional dimension encodes what the sensation means for the self. (see)
In other words, the system judges what the pain sensory information represents for the self (“is it a threat?”), and according to its judgment, the pain sensory information is coupled with an affective-emotional dimension.

And it is the affective-emotional dimension of pain that is the “feeling of unpleasantness”, not the sensory dimension. Those with pain asymbolia, for example, experience the sensory dimension of pain but not the affective-emotional dimension, and as a result say they feel pain but don't care.

Even those of us who don't suffer from pain asymbolia can easily see that there is a profound distinction between the intensity of pain (sensory dimension) and the unpleasantness of pain (affective-emotional dimension).
Julia Galef had proposed this very enlightening example in an old post (which I had great difficulty in retrieving), where she recounts her stay in hospital for second- and third-degree burns:

But the one thing that did seem to dramatically affect my pain level was my belief about what was causing the pain. At one point, I was lying on my side and a nurse was pulling a bandage off of one of my burns; I couldn’t see what she was doing, but it felt like the bandage was sticking to the wound, and it was agonizing. But then she said: “Now, keep in mind, I’m just taking off the edges of the bandage here, so this is all normal skin. It just hurts because it’s like pulling tape off your skin.” And once she said that — once I started picturing tape being pulled off of normal, intact skin rather than an open wound — the pain didn’t bother me nearly as much. It really drove home to me how much of my experience of pain is psychological; if I believe the cause of the pain is something frightening or upsetting, then the pain seems much worse.

And in the same post:

I’d had a similar thought a few months ago, which I’d then forgotten about until the burn experience called it back to mind. I’d been carrying a heavy shopping bag on my shoulder one day, and the weight of the bag’s straps was cutting into the skin on my shoulder. But I barely noticed it. And then it occurred to me that if I had been experiencing that exact same sensation on my shoulder, in the absence of a shopping bag, it would have seemed quite painful. The fact that I knew the sensation was caused by something mundane and harmless reduced the pain so much it didn’t even register in my mind as a negative experience.

What this tells us is that our mind judges the signification of the sensation for the self, and that it is this judgment that produces or not the unpleasant aspect; no judgment or no negative judgment about the pain = no unpleasantness.
(Obviously, the “judgment” is partly unconscious and automatic, it's not so easily controlled).

But here, it may shed some light on the effect of meditation and Buddhism.

In OM meditation, we must observe sensations in a non-judgmental, non-reactive, receptive, and detached way. In the long run, this seems to reorganize our system, deactivating the affective-emotional dimension.
Research seems to suggest that new meditators reduce suffering through reappraisal, while advanced meditators reduce suffering through outright deactivation of appraisal; not positive judgment, but no judgment at all. (see)
This means that advanced meditators can feel the sensory dimension of pain, but without the unpleasant side.

In Buddhist terms, this explains a bit of the “two arrows of pain” thing.
It also explains the intimate connection that Buddhists make between suffering and the self; suffering is the affective-emotional dimension, and the affective-emotional dimension is responsible for judging what the sensation means for the self.

But still, it doesn't seem to explain everything. For example, some meditators say they continue to feel negative emotions, but say they don't feel “connected” or “fused” to these emotions; they don't care at all. It sounds like pain asymbolia, but for emotions and not pain, which is quite strange.

What I feel is happening in such cases is that the emotional-affective system continues to function, but it stops being integrated into the self-model.

The self-model is a kind of object that the system postulates, an inference it makes, which serves to facilitate/allow a whole bunch of stuff. In a previous post, I said, for example, that some people propose that the self serves as the hidden cause of self-evidencing. But the self seems to serve many other purposes, and many people distinguish “different selves” which are then bound together in a single self; narrative self, bodily self, affective self, agential self, etc. (see)

So what it seems to me can happen is that the emotional-affective system continues to function, but the emotions cease to be linked to a self or to the self. An unbounding of something with the self is something that can happen in many other cases, and gives the feeling that a sensation no longer has the character of “mineness”. For example, some people with pain asymbolia say that the pain doesn't seem to be “theirs”. Some people also feel this way about parts of their body, thoughts and so on. It can happen for any number of reasons, for example when the system fails to bind a coherent self and therefore has to make sacrifices to resolve prediction errors.

So rather than the affective-emotional system uncoupling from the sensory system (sensory-affective uncoupling), it's the affective-emotional system uncoupling from the self-model (affective-self uncoupling). Although the affective-emotional system is intimately linked to the self (it makes judgments about the significance of sensations for the self), it seems to be able to detach itself from it. I have to admit that I find it hard to imagine what it's like phenomenologically to feel anger without having the impression that it's “us” who feel that anger, and that we don't really care, but it's a recurring testimony.

Alternatively, we could also consider that Buddhism/meditation causes a major disruption of the self-model, preventing certain auxiliary systems from functioning normally or binding to the self-model.

Further readings :
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7673417/
https://theses.hal.science/tel-04213136v1/file/TH2022POUBLAN-COUZARDOTARNAUD.pdf
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12671-021-01797-0
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763421003560
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9823141/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4941786/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39216636/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-94223-7
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32803491/
https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/jicm.2023.0328
https://journals.lww.com/bsam/abstract/2018/11000/reduced_fear_conditioned_pain_modulation_in.4.aspx
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335036487_The_neural_mechanisms_of_mindfulness-based_pain_relief_a_functional_magnetic_resonance_imaging-based_review_and_primer
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9823141/
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00647/full
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12671-021-01782-7
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29886175/
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/371349785_Meditation_as_an_Adjunct_to_the_Management_of_Acute_Pain
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.659835/full
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11097-025-10081-8
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7658103/
https://www.academia.edu/33757101/Self_unbound_ego_dissolution_in_psychedelic_experience