School of Psychology, University of Southampton, Southampton, Hampshire, UK.
Clin J Pain. 2013 Jul;29(7):583-90. doi: 10.1097/AJP.0b013e31826b4849.
The specificity and time-course of attentional bias in chronic headache were investigated. Individuals with chronic headache, compared with healthy controls, were hypothesized to show significant attentional bias towards disorder-relevant headache-related images.
Individuals with chronic headache (n=37) and headache-free controls (n=38) completed a visual-probe task with headache-related, pain-related, health-threat, and general-threat pictorial stimuli, which were presented at 500 and 1250 ms exposure durations.
Individuals with chronic headache, compared with headache-free controls, demonstrated significant bias towards headache-related images presented for 1250 ms. Considering participant groups separately, the chronic headache group showed bias towards headache-related images at 500 and 1250 ms, and pain-related images at 500 ms. The control group showed bias towards general-threat images at 500 ms.
Individuals with chronic headache demonstrate attentional bias towards pain information, which is most prominently shown towards stimuli relevant to their specific disorder. Biases are also more pronounced at longer stimuli presentation times associated with maintained attention. Future research should investigate the clinical implications of attentional bias in chronic headache, and further explore the benefits of attentional bias modification upon patient functioning.
研究慢性头痛患者注意力偏向的特异性和时程。假设与健康对照组相比，慢性头痛患者对与疾病相关的头痛相关图像表现出明显的注意力偏向。
37 名慢性头痛患者和 38 名无头痛对照者完成了一项视觉探测任务，其中包括与头痛相关、与疼痛相关、与健康威胁相关和与一般威胁相关的图片刺激，这些刺激在 500 和 1250 毫秒的暴露时间内呈现。
与无头痛对照组相比，慢性头痛患者对呈现 1250 毫秒的与头痛相关的图像表现出明显的偏向。分别考虑参与者组，慢性头痛组在 500 和 1250 毫秒时对与头痛相关的图像以及在 500 毫秒时对与疼痛相关的图像表现出偏向。对照组在 500 毫秒时对一般威胁图像表现出偏向。
慢性头痛患者表现出对疼痛信息的注意力偏向，这种偏向最明显地表现为对与他们特定疾病相关的刺激。在与持续注意力相关的较长刺激呈现时间，偏向更为明显。未来的研究应该探讨慢性头痛患者注意力偏向的临床意义，并进一步探索注意力偏向修正对患者功能的益处。
