Highlights
- •Pain control attempts may result in heightened attention to pain-related information.
- •Pain control attempts should thus bias attention to the pain-relevant location.
- •A tactile change detection task was presented to pain control and comparison groups.
- •Comparison group shows an attentional bias for the pain location when under threat.
- •Pain control group shows similar attentional bias irrespective of threat.
Abstract
Motivational accounts of pain behavior and disability suggest that persisting attempts
to avoid or control pain may paradoxically result in heightened attention to pain-related
information. We investigated whether attempts to control pain prioritized attention
to the location where pain was expected, using a tactile change detection paradigm.
Thirty-seven undergraduate students had to detect changes between 2 consecutively
presented patterns of tactile stimuli at various body locations. One of the locations
was made threatening by occasionally administering a pain-eliciting stimulus. Half
of the participants (pain control group) were encouraged to actively avoid the administering
of pain by pressing a button as quickly as possible, whereas the other participants
(comparison group) were not. The actual amount of painful stimuli was the same in
both groups. Results showed that in the comparison group, the anticipation of pain
resulted in better detection of tactile changes at the pain location than at the other
locations, indicating an attentional bias for the threatened location. Crucially,
the pain control group showed a similar attentional bias, but also when there was
no actual presence of threat. This suggests that although threat briefly prioritized
the threatened location, the goal to control pain did so in a broader, more context-driven
manner.
Perspective
This study investigates the impact of attempts to control pain on somatosensory processing
at the pain location. It provides further insight into the motivational mechanisms
of pain-related attention. It also points to the negative consequences of trying to
control uncontrollable pain, such as is often the case in chronic pain.
Key words
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: November 11, 2014
Accepted:
October 28,
2014
Received in revised form:
October 22,
2014
Received:
May 23,
2014
Footnotes
Disclosures: This study was supported by a research grant (BOF11/STA/004) from the Special Research Foundation of Ghent University (BOF) awarded to S. Van Damme.
The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
Identification
Copyright
© 2015 American Pain Society. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
