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

Eleana A Pinto; Stefaan Van Damme; Diana M Torta; Ann Meulders

doi:10.7717/peerj.16544

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

PeerJ. 2023 Dec 20:11:e16544. doi: 10.7717/peerj.16544. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Eleana A Pinto^{1

2}, Stefaan Van Damme¹, Diana M Torta³, Ann Meulders^{3

4}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Experimental-Clinical and Health Psychology, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
² Department of Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences, University of Luxembourg, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg.
³ Health Psychology, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
⁴ Experimental Health Psychology, Department of Clinical Psychological Science, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, Maastricht, Netherlands.

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) outcomes. To increase the motivational value of pursuing the nonpain motor goal, in the conflicting condition participants could receive a reward for a good motor performance. To examine somatosensory attention during movement, somatosensory evoked potentials (SEPs; N120 and P200) were obtained in response to innocuous tactile stimuli administered on a pain-relevant or pain-irrelevant body location. We expected that the threat of pain would enhance somatosensory attention. Furthermore, we expected that the possibility of getting a reward would inhibit this effect, due to pain-reward interactions.

Results: Against our predictions, the amplitude of the N120 did not differ across movement types and locations. Furthermore, the P200 component showed significantly larger SEPs for conflicting and threat movements compared to neutral, suggesting that the threat of pain increased somatosensory attention. However, this effect was not modulated by nonpain motor goal pursuit, as reflected by the lack of modulation of the N120 and P200 in the conflicting condition as compared to the threat condition. This study corroborates the idea that pain-related somatosensory attention is enhanced by threat of pain, even when participants were motivated to move to obtain a reward.

Keywords: Motivation; Motor action; Pain.

MeSH terms

Electroencephalography*
Evoked Potentials, Somatosensory / physiology
Goals*
Humans
Motivation
Pain / psychology

Grants and funding

This research was conducted at Maastricht University and was supported by a Research Grant from the Research Foundation-Flanders (FWO), Belgium, (grant ID G000518N) granted to Stefaan Van Damme, Diana Torta and Ann Meulders. The contribution of Ann Meulders was supported by a Vidi grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), The Netherlands (grant ID 452-17-002). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.