Department of Experimental-Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
Health Psychology Group, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
Exp Brain Res. 2020 May;238(5):1169-1176. doi: 10.1007/s00221-020-05790-2. Epub 2020 Mar 31.
Pain serves to protect against bodily threat, and therefore initiates protective responses such as attending toward threat-relevant information. Since pain is often exacerbated by executing movements, these motor actions may serve as cues for pain. Up to date, however, pain-related attention during movement remains largely unexplored. While it has been shown that the preparation of a pain-related movement leads to enhanced processing of somatosensory information, it is unclear how the actual execution of a movement interacts with somatosensory attention. In the current study, we examined whether somatosensory processing is enhanced at a moving body part when the movement is expected to be associated with pain. Participants were asked to execute hand movements which were occasionally followed by a pain stimulus. To measure somatosensory attention, a task-irrelevant, innocuous tactile probe was presented on either hand to evoke a somatosensory evoked potential (SEP). The results showed an elevation of the N120 SEP at the hand performing a potentially painful movement, indicating heightened attention toward tactile information at the threatened moving hand compared to the non-threatened hand. Additionally, the P200 SEP also showed enlarged responses when performing a pain-related movement compared to a no-pain-related movement. These results show that not only the anticipation, but also the execution of pain-related movements, may modulate the processing of somatosensory input, driven by attentional processes.
疼痛有助于保护身体免受威胁，因此会引发保护性反应，例如关注与威胁相关的信息。由于执行动作通常会加剧疼痛，这些运动动作可能成为疼痛的线索。然而，截至目前，运动过程中的疼痛相关注意力仍然在很大程度上未被探索。虽然已经表明，与疼痛相关的运动准备会增强体感信息的处理，但不清楚实际执行运动与体感注意力如何相互作用。在当前的研究中，我们研究了当运动预计与疼痛相关时，移动身体部位的体感处理是否会增强。参与者被要求执行手部运动，这些运动偶尔会伴随着疼痛刺激。为了测量体感注意力，将无关任务的无害触觉探针置于任一只手上，以引发体感诱发电位 (SEP)。结果显示，在执行可能引起疼痛的运动的手上，SEP 的 N120 升高，这表明与未受威胁的手相比，受威胁的移动手对触觉信息的注意力增强。此外，与无疼痛相关的运动相比，执行与疼痛相关的运动时 P200 SEP 的反应也更大。这些结果表明，不仅是预期，而且与疼痛相关的运动的执行也可能通过注意力过程来调节体感输入的处理。
