Here's how pain experienced in everyday life impacts memory

A new study has found that higher pain intensity is linked to reductions in working memory ability and increased activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortexThe findings of the study were published in the journal NeuropsychologiaPrior research suggested that painrelated impairments in working memory depend on an individuals level of emotional distress Yet the specific brain and psychological factors underlying the role of emotional distress in contributing to this relationship are not well understoodHowever this study suggested that healthy individuals in pain also show deficits in working memory or the cognitive process of holding and manipulating information over short periods of timeThe study titled Modeling neural and selfreported factors of affective distress in the relationship between pain and working memory in healthy individuals sought to address this gap in the literatureThe study was authored by recent University of Miami psychology PhD graduate students Steven Anderson Joanna Witkin and Taylor Bolt and their advisors Elizabeth Losin director of the Social and Cultural Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Miami Maria Llabre professor and associate chair of the Department of Psychology and Claire AshtonJames senior lecturer at the University of SydneyThe study used publicly available brain imaging and selfreport data from the Human Connectome Project HCP a largescale project sponsored by the National Institutes of Health NIH which aims to construct a map of the complete structural and functional connections in the healthy human brainBrain imaging and selfreport data from 416 HCP participants were analysed using structural equation modeling SEM a statistical technique for modeling complex relationships between multiple variablesIn the 228 participants who reported experiencing some level of pain in the seven days prior to the study the authors found that higher pain intensity was directly associated with worse performance a commonly used test of working memory the nback task In the nback task participants are shown a series of letters and asked whether the letter they are seeing appeared on some number of screens previously The more screens back in the sequence participants are asked to recall the more working memory is requiredIn addition the authors found that higher pain intensity was indirectly associated with worse working memory performance through increased activity in a particular region in the center of the frontal cortex during the nback task the ventromedial prefrontal cortex vmPFC The vmPFC is a brain region involved in pain affective distress and cognition Interestingly the relationship between everyday pain and vmPFC brain activity in this study is similar to prior findings in patients with chronic painWe found that healthy participants with even low levels of reported pain had different levels of activity in the vmPFC during the nback task compared to healthy participants who didnt report pain Surprisingly this pattern of activity was more similar to patients with chronic pain than healthy patients who are exposed to pain manipulations in a laboratory said WitkinIn contrast the authors found that certain aspects of emotional distress reported by participants such as anger fear and perceived stress were not associated with working memory performanceStudies looking at the relationship between pain and cognition have typically focused on patients with chronic pain or research participants given experimentallyinduced pain noted AndersonEven though pain is a common experience for many people we know surprisingly little about how the everyday experience of pain impacts cognition Anderson addedUsing the publicly available HCP dataset allowed the researchers to include data from a much larger group of participants than is typical in brain imaging studies due to the high cost of brain scansThis large sample enabled authors to use structural equation modeling a statistical technique that allows for the understanding of complex relationships between multiple variables that in this case may help explain how pain decreases working memory The authors note that their findings have potential implications in both clinical and nonclinical settingsThis study highlights the real impact that pain can have on our ability to think even in healthy people and points how this may come about in the brain said LosinThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever