Attentional Re-training for Chronic Pain Patients

Overview

Hyper-vigilance, focusing, avoidance are part of the vocabulary used by the clinician who deals with chronic pain. These notions refer to the functioning and dysfunction of so-called "selective" attention. These "selective attentional biases" are believed to be responsible, in part, for the development and maintenance of negative pain-related thoughts (such as catastrophic thoughts), inappropriate behaviours (such as inactivity and fear of movement) and unpleasant emotions (such as stress or anger). In addition, they would also be a powerful indicator of the onset of post-operative pain and could limit the effectiveness of therapeutic management. Therapeutically, attention bias can be "managed" through attentional re-training techniques (ABMs) that teach patients to direct their attention differently. These techniques have been widely validated in anxious or addictive populations but have never been used to date in chronic pain patients. This home-based attention bias management (e-retraining) would represent, for chronic pain patients, an additional tool aimed not only at reducing their pain but also at achieving other associated factors such as anxiety, stress, catastrophic thoughts, avoidance behaviours and quality of life.

After obtaining the patients' agreement, they will be randomized in one of the 3 experimental groups: * G1: Attentional training to avoid threatening, negative or pain-related information. * G2: Attention training for vigilance for positive emotional information. * G3: neutral attentional training (control group). The study will be conducted from the patient's home via a connection to the protected site of the Nantes University Hospital. The various questionnaires will be completed from the secure site of the Nantes University Hospital and the computerized experimental tasks will be carried out using the Inquisit software (WEB version at home). The study will begin with an evaluation of the patients' attention and psychological processes (completion of questionnaires + 2 attention tasks), during a follow-up visit to the urology department of the University Hospital of Nantes. Then, an 8-week attentional re-training program (2 training sessions per week) will be proposed. At the end of the 8 weeks, an evaluation (Questionnaires + attention tasks) will be offered to patients always from home. Finally, a final evaluation, 4 weeks after the end of the re-training, will always be proposed from the patient's home.