Mazidi M, et al. - In the current investigation, researchers assessed the attentional bias for painful facial expressions among veterans with chronic pain and post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) and controls. In addition, they sought for its correlation with PTSS, using both traditional and variability-based attentional bias measures. Fifty-four veterans with chronic pain and 30 age/education-matched controls were made to complete a self-report measure of PTSS and a modified version of the dot-probe task with painful, happy, and neutral facial expressions. The analysis suggests that war veterans frequently experience comorbid chronic pain with PTSD symptoms. Avoidance of pain-related stimuli and an overall attentional dysregulation for emotional facial expressions were seen with veterans with chronic pain and PTSS. Possibly these individuals develop an avoidance of pain cues as a coping strategy under stressful conditions.