Pain and Attention: A Discussion of Two Studies

摘要

In this issue of The Journal of Pain, 2 studies address the question of how attention and pain are intertwined. Vancleef et al2 showed that administration of a pain stimulus caused task performance deterioration. In contrast, Veldhuijzen et al3 demonstrated that administration of pain did not cause deficits in atten-tional task performance.Both studies assessed the disruptive effect of pain on attention; however, they used different approaches to address this issue. Two of these different approaches can be considered possible candidates to account for the different outcomes, ie, the anticipatory fearful-ness or experienced threat value of the pain stimulus, and the way experimental pain was administered.One of the most important differences between the studies was the modulation of anticipatory fearfulness to the pain stimulus. In the study of Vancleef et al,2 participants were instructed before the start of the experiment that a pain stimulus would be applied. Further, the authors told the participants that this stimulus would directly stimulate the pain fibers to further increase the perceived threat value of the pain stimulus. Although the subjects were instructed to ignore the pain stimuli and to concentrate on performing the task, task performance deteriorated when the pain stimulus was simultaneously applied with the task. In contrast, in the study of Veldhuijzen et al,3 participants were not informed that the stimulus applied would be painful, and therefore, the participants did not experience anticipatory fear toward the pain stimulus.