Browsing by Author "Khatibi, Ali"

Now showing 1 - 8 of 8

Open Access
Attentional bias to threat-related information among individuals with dental complaints: The role of pain expectancy
(Frontiers Media S.A., 2018) Dehghani, M.; Mohammadi, S.; Sharpe, L.; Khatibi, Ali
Expecting pain can be perceived as a threat may involve recruitment of cognitive strategies (such as attentional avoidance) which might help the person to reduce distress. The ecological validity of the paradigms aiming to study the attentional biases toward or away from threatening stimuli by manipulating the perception of threat in experimental settings has been questioned. Therefore, the current study aims to investigate the attentional bias toward or away from the threat when a confrontation with a real threatening and painful condition would be expected (i.e., dental treatment). One hundred and twenty-seven patients referred to three dentistry clinics for a dental treatment (experiment participants) and 30 individuals with no dental complaints (control participants) completed this study. Patients were randomly allocated to a high pain expectancy (HPE: n = 65) or a low pain expectancy (LPE: n = 62) expectancy condition. All participants completed questionnaires of distress, fear of pain, and fear of dental pain. Furthermore, they participated in a dot-probe task that assessed their attention to painful faces, dental pictures, and happy faces. In addition, before the treatment, participants reported their anticipated pain intensity and after the treatment, they reported the pain intensity that they perceived during the treatment using two separate visual analog scales. Patients in the HPE group showed a bias away from dental pictures compared to LPE and control group participants. HPE group patients also reported greater pain intensity during the treatment compared to LPE patients. Greater attentional bias away from dental pictures among HPE patients was associated with higher levels of fear of pain, fear of dental pain, and stress. Avoidance of highly salient threatening images can be seen as an unhelpful emotion-regulation strategy that individuals use to manage their fears. However, in this study, avoidance was associated with poorer outcomes.
Open Access
Be precise and suffer less pain! a comment on “A brief intervention utilising visual feedback reduces pain and enhances tactile acuity in CLBP patients”
(IOS Press, 2016) Khatibi, Ali
Open Access
Chronic pain and selective attention to pain arousing daily activity pictures : evidence from an eye tracking study
(Iran University of Medical Sciences, 2017) Mahmoodi-Aghdam, Masoumeh; Dehghani, Mohsen; Ahmadi, Mehrnoosh; Banaraki, Anahita Khorrami; Khatibi, Ali
Introduction: According to the pain research literature, attentional bias for pain is the mechanism responsible for the development and maintenance of fear of pain in patients with chronic pain. However, there is still some debate about the exact mechanism and the role of faster engagement versus difficulty in disengagement in the development of attentional bias. Methods: To investigate attentional bias in patients with chronic pain, we used an eye-tracker with the pictures of pain-provoking activities and compared the results with an age- and gendermatched group of pain-free participants. In addition, other measures of pain-related cognition and pain severity ratings were included to assess their contribution to the attentional bias toward pain-related information. Results: Calculating the frequency of the first fixations showed that both groups fixated initially on pain-provoking pictures compared to neutral one. Calculating the speed of fixations showed that control participants were faster in fixating on neutral stimuli, but patients with pain were faster in fixating on pain-provoking pictures, indicating a relative vigilance for the pain-related stimuli among them. These patients reported that the intensity of pain in the previous week was positively correlated with the speed of their fixation on the painful stimuli. Conclusion: Although these results did not provide unequivocal support for the vigilanceavoidance hypothesis, they are generally consistent with the results of studies using eye tracking technology. Furthermore, our findings put a question over characterization of attentional biases in patients with chronic pain by simply relating that to difficulty in disengaging from pain-related stimuli.
Open Access
The effect of threat on cognitive biases and pain outcomes: an eye-tracking study
(John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2016) Todd, J.; Sharpe, L.; Colagiuri, B.; Khatibi, Ali
Background: Theoretical accounts of attentional and interpretation biases in pain suggest that these biases are interrelated and are both influenced by perceived threat. A laboratory-based study was conducted to test whether these biases are influenced by threat and their interrelationship and whether attention or interpretation biases predict pain outcomes. Methods: Healthy participants (n = 87) received either threatening or reassuring pain information and then completed questionnaires, interpretation and attentional bias tasks (with eye-tracking) and a pain task (the cold pressor). Results: There was an interaction effect for threat group and stimuli type on mean dwell time for face stimuli, such that there was an attentional bias towards happy faces in the low- but not high-threat group. Further, high threat was also associated with shorter pain tolerance, increased pain and distress. In correlational analyses, avoidance of affective pain words was associated with increased pain. However, no relationship was found between attention and interpretation biases, and interpretation biases were not influenced by threat or associated with pain. Conclusions: These findings provide partial support for the threat interpretation model and the importance of threat and affective pain biases, yet no relationship between cognitive processing biases was found, which may only occur in clinical pain samples. What does this study add?: In healthy participants, no relationship between attention and interpretation biases was found. Eye tracking revealed an association between later attentional processes and pain. Threat influenced attentional biases and pain outcomes, partially supporting theoretical accounts.
Open Access
Incorporating family function into chronic pain disability: the role of catastrophizing
(Hindawi Publishing Corporation, 2016) Akbari, F.; Dehghani, M.; Khatibi, Ali; Vervoort, T.
Background: Observers' responses to pain are recently investigated to more comprehensively explain chronic pain (CP) and disability. However, the role of family context, defined as interference in roles, communication, and problem-solving, and how (i.e., through which mechanisms) these variables contribute to CP related disability have yet to be examined. Objectives: The aim of the present study is to examine family context in relationship to pain catastrophizing, fear of movement, and depression and its role in understanding CP disability. Three different models were examined. Methods: A total sample of 142 patients with musculoskeletal chronic pain was recruited to examine the role of fear of movement, pain intensity, pain catastrophizing, and depression in relationship to family functioning as predictors of disability. Results: Findings indicated that two models showed acceptable fit, but one of them revealed superior fit indices. Results of the model with superior fit indices indicated that family dysfunction may contribute to catastrophic thinking, which, in turn, contributes to patients' disability through increasing fear of movement and depression. Discussion.The current study provides further support for the notion that the impact of emotional and cognitive variables upon CP-related disability can be better understood when we consider the social context of pain patients and family function in particular. Copyright © 2016 Fatemeh Akbari et al.
Open Access
Magnocellular based visual motion training improves reading in Persian
(Nature Publishing Group, 2019-02) Ebrahimi, L.; Pouretemad, H.; Khatibi, Ali; Stein, J.
The visual magnocellular system is thought to play a crucial role in learning to read. Here therefore, we examined whether magnocellular based training could improve reading in children with visual reading problems. The participants were 24 male primary school students aged between 9–11 (Mean = 9.76, SD = 0.59) with specific reading difficulty. Experimental and control groups were matched for age, sex, educational level, IQ, reading abilities (measured by APRA), magnocellular performance as assessed by a random dot kinematogram (RDK) paradigm and recordings of their saccadic eye movements. The experimental group received twelve magnocellular based visual motion training sessions, twice a week over 6 weeks. During the same period, the control group played a video game with the help of a practitioner. All measures were made just prior to the training and were repeated at the 6th, 12th training session and one month later. The experimental group showed significant improvements in magnocellular function, visual errors and reading accuracy during the course of intervention. Follow-up assessment confirmed that these effects persisted one month later. Impaired magnocellular functioning appeared to be an important cause of poor reading in Persian. Hence magnocellular based training could help many children with specific reading difficulties. Also testing magnocellular function could be used as screening tool for detecting dyslexia before a child begins to fail at school.
Open Access
The relationship between ruminating the catastrophic consequences of bodily changes and positive reappraisal and practical problem-solving strategies in individuals with illness anxiety disorder
(Iran University of Medical Sciences, 2020-09) Elhamiasl, M.; Dehghani, M.; Heidari, M.; Khatibi, Ali
Introduction: Cognitive emotion regulation is suggested to contribute to Illness Anxiety Disorder (IAD). Reappraisal and suppression are essential ER strategies with controversial data about their roles in IAD. Relevant studies are mostly limited to exploring these two strategies in individuals without such disorder. Therefore, we aimed to study the role of emotion regulation in the psychopathology of IAD by evaluating other ER strategies in illnessanxious individuals. Furthermore, we investigated the relationship between IAD and emotion regulation by targeting the role of interpretation bias for health-related information. Methods: The study participants were 60 university students. They underwent a semistructured clinical interview to assess the presence or absence of IAD symptoms (n=30/ group). They completed a battery of questionnaires measuring IAD, emotion regulation, and interpretation bias. Results: The illness-anxious group applied significantly less reappraisal and refocus on planning and more rumination, catastrophizing, and acceptance strategies, compared to the controls. Besides, interpretation bias was positively correlated with rumination and catastrophizing; while its association with reappraisal and planning was negative. Conclusion: Both functional (e.g. reappraisal & planning) and dysfunctional strategies (e.g. rumination & catastrophizing) contributed to the psychopathology of IAD. The biased interpretation of bodily information could make individuals prone to ruminate about the catastrophic consequences of bodily changes; such conditions interrupt fostering more positive reappraisal or practical problem-solving strategies.
Open Access
Test-retest reliability of myelin imaging in the human spinal cord: Measurement errors versus region-and aging-induced variations
(Public Library of Science, 2018) Lévy, S.; Guertin, M. -C.; Khatibi, Ali; Mezer, A.; Martinu, K.; Chen, J. -I.; Stikov, N.; Rainville, P.; Cohen-Adad, J.
Purpose To implement a statistical framework for assessing the precision of several quantitative MRI metrics sensitive to myelin in the human spinal cord: T1, Magnetization Transfer Ratio (MTR), saturation imposed by an off-resonance pulse (MTsat) and Macromolecular Tissue Volume (MTV). Methods Thirty-three healthy subjects within two age groups (young, elderly) were scanned at 3T. Among them, 16 underwent the protocol twice to assess repeatability. Statistical reliability indexes such as the Minimal Detectable Change (MDC) were compared across metrics quantified within different cervical levels and white matter (WM) sub-regions. The differences between pathways and age groups were quantified and interpreted in context of the test-retest repeatability of the measurements. Results The MDC was respectively 105.7ms, 2.77%, 0.37% and 4.08% for T1, MTR, MTsat and MTV when quantified over all WM, while the standard-deviation across subjects was 70.5ms, 1.34%, 0.20% and 2.44%. Even though particular WM regions did exhibit significant differences, these differences were on the same order as test-retest errors. No significant difference was found between age groups for all metrics. Conclusion While T1-based metrics (T1 and MTV) exhibited better reliability than MT-based measurements (MTR and MTsat), the observed differences between subjects or WM regions were comparable to (and often smaller than) the MDC. This makes it difficult to determine if observed changes are due to variations in myelin content, or simply due to measurement error. Measurement error remains a challenge in spinal cord myelin imaging, but this study provides statistical guidelines to standardize the field and make it possible to conduct large-scale multi-center studies.