Abstract
It is known that attending to a cutaneous stimulus briefly increases its subjective intensity. The purpose of the present study was to determine whether an extended period of attention would produce a longer-lasting perceptual amplification. Eighty subjects were assigned alternately to experimental and control groups. Members of the two groups received identical series of tactile stimuli (near-threshold von Frey filaments applied to the forearm), but those in the experimental group carried out a two-interval forced-choice detection task that required attention to the filaments, while subjects in the control group attended instead to a video game. After this initial phase, all subjects gave magnitude estimates of the intensity of a wide range of von Frey filaments. The experimental group gave estimates 42% greater than those of the control group, both for filaments used in the initial phase, and others not presented previously; the perceptual amplification did not, however, transfer to a different type of pressure stimulus, a 5 mm-diameter rod applied to the skin. The aftereffect of sustained attention lasted for at least 15 min. This phenomenon, demonstrated in normal subjects, may have implications for the hypervigilance of some chronic pain patients, which is characterized by both heightened attention to pain and long-lasting perceptual amplification of noxious stimuli.
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Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to Noah Greifer for statistical advice. This study was supported by a Lindquist Award from the UNC College of Arts and Sciences.
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Both authors contributed to the conception and design of the study, to preparation of materials, and to data analysis. Data collection was carried out by LA. The first draft of the manuscript was written by MH; both authors commented on drafts, and read and approved the final manuscript.
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Communicated by Melvyn A. Goodale.
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Hollins, M., Athans, L. Perceptual amplification following sustained attention: implications for hypervigilance. Exp Brain Res 239, 279–288 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-020-05910-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-020-05910-y