Attentional Bias Toward Negative Information in Patients with Fibromyalgia Syndrome

Duschek, Stefan; Werner, Natalie S.; Limbert, Nils; Winkelmann, Andreas; Montoya, Pedro

doi:10.1111/pme.12360

Cited by 43 publications

(69 citation statements)

References 51 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In future research, self-report scales, for example concerning emotional self-regulation or affective styles, as well as experimental paradigms addressing emotion processing, could be applied for this purpose. 22,30,53,57 In addition, relationships between interoception and pain experience should also be explored. Another limitation concerns results from our use of a female-only sample, which restricts the generalizability of the results.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…[54][55][56] By extension, proneness to negative emotions may exacerbate the vicious circle between aversive mood states and clinical symptoms including hyperalgesia. 57 Somatosensory amplification may be another factor mediating the association between interoceptive awareness with fibromyalgia. As stated in the Introduction, it has been demonstrated that somatosensory amplification correlates negatively with heartbeat perception performance, 18 whereas increased levels of somatosensory amplification have been reported in FMS patients.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Diminished Interoceptive Awareness in Fibromyalgia Syndrome

Duschek

Montoro

Paso

2015

Behavioral Medicine

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Sensitivity to signals arising within the body (interoceptive awareness) has been implicated in emotion processing; interindividual differences in interoceptive awareness modulate both subjective and physiological indicators of emotional experience and the regulation of emotion-related behaviors. This study investigated interoceptive awareness in patients with fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS), a chronic pain condition accompanied by various affective symptoms. Interoceptive awareness was assessed in 45 FMS patients and 31 healthy individuals using a heartbeat perception task. Cognitive performance, comorbid psychiatric disorders and medication use were assessed as possible confounding variables. Concerning the primary outcome, patients exhibited markedly reduced heartbeat perception compared to healthy individuals. Moreover, there was an inverse relationship between interoceptive awareness and FMS symptom severity. Reduced interoceptive awareness may be involved in the affective aspects of FMS pathology. Poor access to bodily signals may restrict patients´ ability to integrate these signals during emotional processing, which, by extension, may preclude optimal emotional self-regulation.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Diminished Interoceptive Awareness in Fibromyalgia Syndrome

Duschek

Montoro

Paso

2015

Behavioral Medicine

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The anhedonia bias hypothesis suggests that patients with depression and patients with chronic pain might be less sensitive to reward, which entails that their attentional system might not adequately respond to rewarding (emotional) stimuli ( 1 , 16 ). Moreover, earlier findings in patients with chronic pain from a different paradigm showed an attentional bias for negative information ( 20 ) and evidence from depression research has demonstrated that adults with depression show attentional biases for dysphoric emotional stimuli, including preferred early orienting and maintenance on them, while maintenance on positive stimuli is reduced ( 15 , 16 ). Therefore, we expected that CP and DC showed facilitated orienting to and longer maintenance on negative emotions (sad faces), while less orienting to and maintaining on positive emotions (happy faces).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…Dysfunctional processing of positive and negative emotional information might also play a role in development and maintenance of chronic pain. Few studies have investigated attentional processing of emotional content in chronic pain ( 19 – 21 ); a recent study reports alterations of emotional and attentional information processing in patients with fibromyalgia ( 21 ), and another study found an attentional bias for negative emotional words in fibromyalgia patients based on the Stroop task ( 20 ). Rossello et al ( 21 ) presented video tours through an external environment under induced pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral affective state and assessed different psychophysiological measures in response to these environments.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Patients with fibromyalgia showed abnormal brain functioning and autonomic cardiovascular control during affective processing, but this was not specific for the unpleasant affective state. In the study by Duschek et al ( 20 ), participants were asked to name the color of an adjective that was negative, positive, or neutral. Patients with fibromyalgia needed longer response times in the case of negative adjectives that were interpreted as an attentional bias for negative information.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Processing of Emotional Faces in Patients with Chronic Pain Disorder: An Eye-Tracking Study

Giel¹,

Paganini

Schank³

et al. 2018

Front. Psychiatry

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

ObjectiveProblems in emotion processing potentially contribute to the development and maintenance of chronic pain. Theories focusing on attentional processing have suggested that dysfunctional attention deployment toward emotional information, i.e., attentional biases for negative emotions, might entail one potential developmental and/or maintenance factor of chronic pain.MethodsWe assessed self-reported alexithymia, attentional orienting to and maintenance on emotional stimuli using eye tracking in 17 patients with chronic pain disorder (CP) and two age- and sex-matched control groups, 17 healthy individuals (HC) and 17 individuals who were matched to CP according to depressive symptoms (DC). In a choice viewing paradigm, a dot indicated the position of the emotional picture in the next trial to allow for strategic attention deployment. Picture pairs consisted of a happy or sad facial expression and a neutral facial expression of the same individual. Participants were asked to explore picture pairs freely.ResultsCP and DC groups reported higher alexithymia than the HC group. HC showed a previously reported emotionality bias by preferentially orienting to the emotional face and preferentially maintaining on the happy face. CP and DC participants showed no facilitated early attention to sad facial expressions, and DC participants showed no facilitated early attention to happy facial expressions, while CP and DC participants did. We found no group differences in attentional maintenance.ConclusionOur findings are in line with the clinical large overlap between pain and depression. The blunted initial reaction to sadness could be interpreted as a failure of the attentional system to attend to evolutionary salient emotional stimuli or as an attempt to suppress negative emotions. These difficulties in emotion processing might contribute to etiology or maintenance of chronic pain and depression.

show abstract

Impaired somatosensory habituation in older adults with chronic pain during an affective oddball task

Dorado,

Sitges,

van der Meulen

et al. 2024

European Journal of Pain

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

BackgroundChronic pain is one of the most common health conditions among older adults, triggering various disruptions in information processing across attentional, emotional, and somatosensory domains. However, there is insufficient information about how these aspects interact and their potential contribution to the vulnerability of older adults to chronic pain. This study aimed to investigate potential alterations induced by chronic pain during aging in attentional aspects of tactile stimulation and to observe the influence of affective context.MethodTwenty‐six older adults with chronic pain (70.00 ± 5.07 years; 11 males), 28 pain‐free older adults (69.57 ± 3.96 years; 13 males) and 27 healthy younger adults (21.48 ± 1.80 years; 14 males) participated in the study. We compared the somatosensory evoked potentials elicited by frequent and deviant stimulation (probability 14%) applied when participants were viewing blocks of pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral images from the International Affective Picture System.ResultsDuring frequent stimulation, older adults with chronic pain showed higher P50 and N100 amplitudes compared to pain‐free older adults and younger individuals. Furthermore, the older group with pain exhibited higher P300 amplitude during emotional contexts compared to neutral scenarios. During deviant stimulation, older adults with chronic pain exhibited higher P50 and N100 amplitudes compared to pain‐free older adults but displayed typical age‐related flattening during P300.ConclusionsThese findings indicate that chronic pain leads to a decline in the ability to habituate to non‐painful irrelevant somatosensory stimuli, especially when it is presented in an emotional context.Significance StatementIn the present study, we have observed how older individuals suffering from chronic pain exhibit a decline in the habituation capacity of irrelevant somatosensory information. Furthermore, we have observed how the affective context in which these individuals are situated leads to an exacerbation of this deficit. Enhancing our comprehension of how aging and chronic pain interact to impact somatosensory processing could facilitate the tailoring of novel intervention strategies.

show abstract

Attentional Bias Toward Negative Information in Patients with Fibromyalgia Syndrome

Cited by 43 publications

References 51 publications

Diminished Interoceptive Awareness in Fibromyalgia Syndrome

Diminished Interoceptive Awareness in Fibromyalgia Syndrome

Processing of Emotional Faces in Patients with Chronic Pain Disorder: An Eye-Tracking Study

Impaired somatosensory habituation in older adults with chronic pain during an affective oddball task

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About