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

Abstract

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.