Zargari Marandi Ramtin, Fjelsted Camilla Ann, Hrustanovic Iris, Dan Olesen Rikke, Gazerani Parisa
Department of Health Science and Technology Faculty of Medicine, Aalborg University, 9220 Aalborg East, Denmark.
Behav Sci (Basel). 2020 May 20;10(5):92. doi: 10.3390/bs10050092.
The affective dimension of pain contributes to pain perception. Cognitive load may influence pain-related feelings. Eye tracking has proven useful for detecting cognitive load effects objectively by using relevant eye movement characteristics. In this study, we investigated whether eye movement characteristics differ in response to pain-related feelings in the presence of low and high cognitive loads. A set of validated, control, and pain-related sounds were applied to provoke pain-related feelings. Twelve healthy young participants (six females) performed a cognitive task at two load levels, once with the control and once with pain-related sounds in a randomized order. During the tasks, eye movements and task performance were recorded. Afterwards, the participants were asked to fill out questionnaires on their pain perception in response to the applied cognitive loads. Our findings indicate that an increased cognitive load was associated with a decreased saccade peak velocity, saccade frequency, and fixation frequency, as well as an increased fixation duration and pupil dilation range. Among the oculometrics, pain-related feelings were reflected only in the pupillary responses to a low cognitive load. The performance and perceived cognitive load decreased and increased, respectively, with the task load level and were not influenced by the pain-related sounds. Pain-related feelings were lower when performing the task compared with when no task was being performed in an independent group of participants. This might be due to the cognitive engagement during the task. This study demonstrated that cognitive processing could moderate the feelings associated with pain perception.
疼痛的情感维度会影响疼痛感知。认知负荷可能会影响与疼痛相关的感受。眼动追踪已被证明通过使用相关眼动特征来客观检测认知负荷效应是有用的。在本研究中，我们调查了在低认知负荷和高认知负荷情况下，眼动特征对与疼痛相关感受的反应是否存在差异。应用一组经过验证的、对照的和与疼痛相关的声音来引发与疼痛相关的感受。12名健康的年轻参与者（6名女性）在两个负荷水平下执行一项认知任务，一次使用对照声音，一次使用与疼痛相关的声音，顺序随机。在任务过程中，记录眼动和任务表现。之后，要求参与者填写关于他们对所施加认知负荷的疼痛感知的问卷。我们的研究结果表明，认知负荷增加与扫视峰值速度、扫视频率和注视频率降低以及注视持续时间和瞳孔扩张范围增加有关。在眼动测量指标中，与疼痛相关的感受仅在对低认知负荷的瞳孔反应中得到体现。任务表现和感知到的认知负荷分别随着任务负荷水平的增加而降低和增加，且不受与疼痛相关声音的影响。与在独立参与者组中不执行任务时相比，执行任务时与疼痛相关的感受更低。这可能是由于任务期间的认知参与。本研究表明，认知加工可以调节与疼痛感知相关的感受。
