The disruptive effects of pain on n-back task performance in a large general population sample

Abstract

A large general population sample completed an n-back task online. Those who were in pain made more false alarms than those who were pain free.

Effect of alternating postures on cognitive performance for healthy people performing sedentary work

“…A deleterious mechanism on cognitive performance is low-back and/or leg pain -an often occurring parameter in office environments. The primary function of pain is to disrupt attention and to impose behavioural priority (Attridge et al 2015;Moore, Eccleston, and Keogh 2017). Thus, pain will typically override all cognitive demands and reduce cognitive performance (Moore, Eccleston, and Keogh 2017).…”

Medium-term effects of a two-desk sit/stand workstation on cognitive performance and workload for healthy people performing sedentary work: a secondary analysis of a randomised controlled trial

“…Second, there is evidence that musculoskeletal pain can interfere with cognitive performance (Moore, Eccleston, and Keogh 2017;Attridge et al 2015) and thus, we hypothesised that use of sit/stand workstations would help relieve musculoskeletal pain (Karakolis, Barrett, and Callaghan 2016) thereby improving cognitive performance. However, participants in this study were highly sedentary but free from acute or chronic pain/diseases.…”

“…Pain (both chronic and acute) affects attention, memory and accuracy (Moore, Keogh, and Eccleston 2012;Dick, Eccleston, and Crombez 2002;Attridge et al 2015) due to its ability to bias cognitive demands (Moore, Keogh, and Eccleston 2012) and cognitive performance (Moore, Keogh, and Eccleston 2012;Dick, Eccleston, and Crombez 2002;Attridge et al 2015). Since working in alternating body postures and on sit/stand workstations can slow development of, and reduce levels of musculoskeletal pain (Gallagher, Campbell, and Callaghan 2014;Fewster, Gallagher, and Callaghan 2017;Agarwal, Steinmaus, and Harris-Adamson 2017), it is possible that use of sit/stand workstations might result in improved cognitive performance of users.…”

A Break from Pain! Interruption Management in the Context of Pain

“…There exists a large body of research on the "interruptive function of pain", that is, on the propensity of pain to grab attention and to interfere with ongoing activities [1]. The negative effects of chronic pain on various cognitive functions have been consistently shown [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17] and specific recommendations as to how to improve cognitive functioning in chronic pain have been made [18].…”