Attention bias to pain signals: The role of learning processes

August 24, 2005

24 Aug 2005

Investigators from Belgium, led by S. Van Damme, have carried out

research into whether painful stimuli increase a subject's attention

to a linked signal (acquisition) and if so, whether this 'attention

bias' in the presence of pain can be unlearned when that stimulus is

removed (extinction) and later reinstalled (reinstatement).

Their study employed the spatial cueing paradigm first explained by

Posner in 1980 and now established as a reliable method of assessing

attention bias. Subjects are prompted to attend a specific location

using a given signal. That signal can then be accompanied by another

stimulus, in this case pain, to see how it affects the speed of

response.

Van Damme observed 38 undergraduate students through all three stages

of acquisition, extinction and reinstatement. In the acquisition

phase, the positive cue for subjects to attend a given location was

sometimes supplemented with a pain stimulus. A negative or invalid

cue was never accompanied by pain. The results show a faster

detection of valid over invalid cues when the pain stimulus is used -

suggesting an attentional bias to pain.

When the pain stimulus was withheld from positive cues in the

extinction phase, the attention bias was immediately lost and there

was no difference in speed of recognition for either positive or

negative cues. However, perhaps of most interest were the results

from the reinstatement phase where Van Damme describes how attention

bias was successfully re-instigated by presenting subjects with an

unpredicted pain stimulus, which was completely unlinked to the

either positive or negative cues. This may help in understanding some

of the difficulties encountered by patients who suffer with returning

pain that has previously been managed or controlled.

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