Modulation of attention to pain by goal-directed action: a somatosensory evoked potentials approach.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Attentional processes are modulated by current goal pursuit. While pursuing salient cognitive goals, individuals prioritize goal-related information and suppress goal-irrelevant ones. This occurs in the context of pain too, where nonpain cognitive goal pursuit was found to have inhibitory effects on pain-related attention. Crucially, how pursuing nonpain motor goals affects pain-related somatosensory attention is still unknown. The aim of this study was to investigate whether nonpain motor goal pursuit would attenuate pain-related somatosensory attention.

Methods

Healthy volunteers (N = 45) performed a robotic arm conditioning task where movements were paired with conflicting (pain and reward), threatening (only pain) or neutral (no pain and no reward) outc

SUBMITTER: Pinto EA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10748472 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature