Using fast periodic visual stimulation to investigate the processing of health-related images in the human brain

Health anxiety is often linked to lower pain thresholds and heightened sensitivity to health-related stimuli, yet the relationship between these psychological and physiological traits remains complex. In this study, we relied on the use of the brain's ability to discriminate fast and periodically presented stimuli (i.e. oddballs) of a given image category within a stream of unrelated images, to investigate whether neural responses to health-related visual stimuli are associated with individual differences in pain sensitivity and psychological traits such as anxiety and depression. We hypothesized that, if the periodically presented health-related oddball elicits a periodic neural response, this image category might lead to a stronger response in individuals with health anxiety and psychological malaise. This is the first evidence that periodically presented health-related images elicit a neural response which can be clearly differentiated from unrelated images. Additionally, this response shared a relationship with depression, which was in turn moderated by the pain threshold. While these results offer insight into the interaction between psychological traits, pain threshold and the processing of health-related images, future studies will have to confirm the specificity of the obtained relationships.