This application proposes to investigate the effects of attention on the perception of orofacial pain in man. Unlike nonpain attentional research, whose focus is often optimization of perception, the goal of this project is to identify attentional strategies that can be used clinically to degrade the perception of acute pain. Research with nonpainful stimuli has shown that when attentional resources are allocated to a task, attention is less available for processing other stimuli that draw upon the same pool of resources. Resource models thus suggest that strategies which requires attention to nonpainful stimuli will impair pain perception. Studies of pain strategies have usually inferred rather than quantified the use of attentional resources. Thus, the utility of resource models for pain and the relative merits of strategies that manipulate attention have been difficult to evaluate. Because acute pain has biological importance, its cognitive processing cannot be assumed to be like that of nonpainful stimuli. This project will determine if attentional resource models developed with nonpainful stimuli are valid for painful stimuli. Experiment 1 will assess the extent to which selective attention to nonpainful stimuli limits processing of pain. Experiments 2 will determine if attentional resources allocated to painful stimuli can be manipulated by cognitive rather that intensity factors. Experiment 3 will assess whether painful and nonpainful stimuli draw upon the same attentional resources in a divided attention task. Because intrusive nonpainful stimuli can capture attention directed elsewhere, differential processing of low and high intensity painful stimuli will be examined. Event-related brain potential measures of attention and converging behavioral data will be obtained. If the general model of limited attentional resources does not hold for painful stimuli, then limits of the model and unique features of the relationship of attention and pain will be further investigated. If the general model does hold, then future research would examine additional attentional manipulations and compare the relative effectiveness of clinical interventions for pain based on their demand for attentional resources.
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