Hypervigilance and pain: the role of bodily threat

The aim of this project is to invigorate research on hypervigilance by a series of well-controlled experiments using innovative attention paradigms. In a number of studies in healthy volunteers, it will be tested whether the experimental induction of bodily threat leads to general hypervigilance for bodily sensations, and whether the threat of pain in one specific body part induces location-specific hypervigilance. Furthermore, the assumption that patients with medically unexplained pain are characterized by excessive hypervigilance as compared with patients with medically explained pain and healthy volunteers will be tested, and the idea of location-specific hypervigilance will be examined in different samples of chronic pain patients. Finally, the view that hypervigilance is a core feature of patients with medically unexplained pain will be contrasted with the assumption that hypervigilance occurs in function of a disposition to experience bodily threat irrespective of population.