ReviewCortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior2017
Attention to pain! A neurocognitive perspective on attentional modulation of pain in neuroimaging studies.
Review in Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 48 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
48 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Arousal and attentional processes in the relationship between pain and time perception: Evidence from a systematic review and meta-analytic structural equation modeling.Attention, perception & psychophysics · 2026Pooled it
- Exploring pain sensitivity changes after acceptance and attention bias modification trainings: preliminary evidence on fear of pain and attention bias.Scientific reports · 2026Trial
- Perception of first and second pain during offset analgesia.Experimental brain research · 2025Trial
- Effects of intensity, attention and medication on auditory-evoked potentials in patients with fibromyalgia.Scientific reports · 2020Trial
- Lower resting-state functional connectivity between frontoparietal and sensory networks is associated with recent pain intensity in a community sample of youth.Neuroimage. Reports · 2026Article
- The Effect of Psychological State on Pain Perception in a Simulated Dental Setting Among Young Adults: A Randomized Comparative Experiment.Dentistry journal · 2026Article
- Contralateral Thermal Pain and Naturally Occurring Muscle Pain Have Different Effects on Force Production During a Fixed Perceived Effort Handgrip Task.European journal of pain (London, England) · 2026Article
- Fibromyalgia: A Multifactorial Pain Disorder.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Review
- Whole-brain mapping of TMS-induced discomfort with large-scale concurrent TMS-fMRI.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Effort and its perception revisited: How physical-domain insights could lead toward a unified theory.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Review
- Functional brain connectivity correlates of pain relief during virtual reality exposure in cancer patients.Frontiers in pain research (Lausanne, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- The involvement of attentional biases in endogenous pain inhibition and autonomic reactivity.PloS one · 2026Article
- Evaluation of dynamic brain function in patients with different degrees of chronic pain by EEG microstate analysis.BMC anesthesiology · 2025Observational
- Chronic Pain Modulates Empathic Responses in People with Spinal Cord Injury.Journal of clinical medicine · 2025Article
- The effect of psychological manipulations on the development of secondary hyperalgesia: a critical review.Pain reports · 2025Review
- Harnessing Extended Reality for Neurocognitive Training in Chronic Pain: State of the Art, Opportunities, and Future Directions.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Time course of the rubber hand illusion-induced analgesia.Pain reports · 2025Article
- Nature exposure induces analgesic effects by acting on nociception-related neural processing.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Working Memory Load-Dependent Cortical Mechanism of Distraction Analgesia in Healthy Individuals: An fNIRS Study.Journal of pain research · 2025Article
- The influence of class mobility on pain empathy among the wealthy in collectivist cultures: evidence from ERPs.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Several studies have used neuroimaging techniques to investigate brain correlates of the attentional modulation of pain. Although these studies have advanced the knowledge in the field, important confounding factors such as imprecise theoretical definitions of attention, incomplete operationalization of the construct under exam, and limitations of techniques relying on measuring regional changes in cerebral blood flow have hampered the potential relevance of the conclusions. Here, we first provide an overview of the major theories of attention and of attention in the study of pain to bridge theory and experimental results. We conclude that load and motivational/affective theories are particularly relevant to study the attentional modulation of pain and should be carefully integrated in functional neuroimaging studies. Then, we summarize previous findings and discuss the possible neural correlates of the attentional modulation of pain. We discuss whether classical functional neuroimaging techniques are suitable to measure the effect of a fluctuating process like attention, and in which circumstances functional neuroimaging can be reliably used to measure the attentional modulation of pain. Finally, we argue that the analysis of brain networks and spontaneous oscillations may be a crucial future development in the study of attentional modulation of pain, and why the interplay between attention and pain, as examined so far, may rely on neural mechanisms shared with other sensory modalities.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.