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The perception of pain is the result of a complex dynamic system that codes, transports and processes nociceptive signals. The relationship between nociceptive information and pain is profoundly affected by affective and cognitive factors [27]. A key role is played by attention, a mechanism by which sensory events are selected and enter awareness. Most literature on attention and pain has been informed by limited-capacity models of human cognition, proposing that sensory signals–including nociceptive ones–exceed processing capacity, and hence require attention to select the signals needed for goal-directed behaviors. Thus, directing attention away from nociceptive information would exclude it from further processing and in this way be analgesic. In this paper, we extend this general model with theories that distinguish between two modes of selection: top-down and bottom-up attention. We present data …