Sex Differences Linking Pain-Related Fear and Interoceptive Hypervigilance: Attentional Biases to Conditioned Threat and Safety Signals in a Visceral Pain Model.

ABSTRACT: Although the broad role of fear and hypervigilance in conditions of the gut-brain axis like irritable bowel syndrome is supported by converging evidence, the underlying mechanisms remain incompletely understood. Even in healthy individuals, it remains unclear how pain-related fear may contribute to pain-related attentional biases for acute visceral pain. Building on our classical fear conditioning work in a clinically relevant model of visceral pain, we herein elucidated pain-related attentional biases shaped by associative learning in healthy women and men, aiming to elucidate possible sex differences and the role of psychological traits. To this end, we compared the impact of differentially conditioned pain-predictive cues on attentional biases in healthy women and men. Sixty-four volunt

SUBMITTER: Labrenz F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7105724 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature