Is attentional prioritization on a location where pain is expected modality-specific or multisensory?

•Tactile and visual stimuli are perceived more rapidly on a threatened body location.•Threat-related spatial prioritization is not limited to somatosensory information.•Bodily threat enhances multisensory processing. Previous research suggests that anticipating pain at a particular body location pri...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Consciousness and cognition 2015-11, Vol.36, p.246-255
Main Authors: Vanden Bulcke, Charlotte, Crombez, Geert, Durnez, Wouter, Van Damme, Stefaan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Anticipation, Psychological - physiology
Attention
Attention - physiology
Bodily threat
Experimental pain
Fear - physiology
Female
Humans
Male
Multisensory integration
Pain management
Pain Perception - physiology
Sensory perception
Temporal Order Judgment
Time Perception - physiology
Touch Perception - physiology
Visual Perception - physiology
Young Adult
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Summary:•Tactile and visual stimuli are perceived more rapidly on a threatened body location.•Threat-related spatial prioritization is not limited to somatosensory information.•Bodily threat enhances multisensory processing. Previous research suggests that anticipating pain at a particular body location prioritizes somatosensory input at that location. The present study tested whether this prioritization effect is limited to somatosensory information (modality-specific hypothesis) or generalizes to other sensory modalities (multisensory hypothesis). Thirty-four students performed tactile and visual Temporal Order Judgment (TOJ) tasks while either expecting a painful stimulus on one of the hands (threat), or expecting no pain stimulus (control). Participants judged the order of either two visual stimuli (visual condition) or two tactile stimuli (tactile condition), one on each hand. Analyses revealed that only in threat trials, participants became aware of stimuli on the threatened hand more quickly as compared to the neutral hand, replicating the prioritization effect. Of particular interest, this effect was not different between the tactile and visual conditions. This suggests that the anticipation of pain results in multisensory prioritization of information at the threatened body location.
ISSN:1053-8100
1090-2376
DOI:10.1016/j.concog.2015.07.003