India, Feb. 28 -- Stubbing your toe or getting a paper cut suddenly can leave you wincing in pain. These surprise injuries often hurt a lot. Do you know why? According to a new study, a scientific reason might be behind it.

Researchers at the University of Tsukuba in Japan published a paper in Cognition that found that pain perception can be affected by factors such as beliefs about pain and its uncertainty. It means that when taken by surprise, your brain may amplify the pain caused by an injury.

The study researched a phenomenon called Bayesian Surprise, which refers to how our brains process pain differently when reality doesn't match our expectations - it is related to how the same injury may hurt us differently at different times o...