Opioid and Pain Cognition

Participants will complete the standard attentional bias task (control) or CBM up to 3x/week during MAT clinic visits for 4 weeks.

Attentional bias: Attentional bias will be assessed during MAT clinic visits using the visual probe task, which is considered the gold standard to evaluate vigilance to salient cues. In the standard attentional bias task, a drug or pain-related word is presented next to a neutral word for 500ms. Subsequently, a probe (i.e., a "q" or "p") replaces the drug/pain word or the neutral word at an equal rate. The participant's task is to indicate the location of the probe as quickly as possible by pressing "q" or "p". Attentional bias is calculated from the difference in reaction times (i.e., neutral cue minus drug/pain cue) to indicate the location of the probe, with higher values indicating greater attentional bias. For all tasks, opioid and pain words will be presented in separate blocks in counterbalanced order. Neutral words paired with opioid or pain words will be matched for length and frequency of use in the English language. Opioid (e.g., syringe, needle, high, blues) and pain sensory (e.g., stuff, throbbing, shooting, burning) and affective (e.g., miserable, tiring, unbearable, exhausting) words will be taken from prior research demonstrating attentional bias in OUD and chronic pain patients.

CBM treatment: In CBM, the task presentation and timing is the same as attentional bias, except the probe always replaces the neutral word. It ensures that: 1) the duration of CBM and control training should not differ; 2) CBM and control participants receive equal practice on the motoric aspects of the task; and 3) CBM and control participants are exposed to the same word cues. Based on previous data, duration of CBM and control trainings will be about 10 minutes.

Inclusion criteria

• Veterans that meet DSM5 criteria for OUD
• Be engaged in Methadone Maintained Program
• Report clinically significant past-week pain intensity (i.e., at least moderate pain severity)

Exclusion criteria

• The inability to read, write and speak English
• Active suicidal ideation
• Diagnosis of psychotic disorder
• Use of drugs that interact negatively with MAT (e.g. benzodiazepines), and
• uncorrected defective vision, which would interfere completing the dot probe task