Columbia University, Department of Psychology, NY, USA.
Pain. 2010 Apr;149(1):19-26. doi: 10.1016/j.pain.2009.10.027. Epub 2010 Feb 2.
It is widely assumed that distraction reduces pain. Similarly, it is assumed that pain distracts from concurrent, unrelated cognitive processing, reducing performance on difficult tasks. Taken together, these assumptions suggest pain processing and cognitive function engage an overlapping set of domain-general, capacity-limited mental resources. However, experimental tests of this proposal have yielded mixed results, leading to alternative proposals that challenge the common model of a bidirectional relationship between concurrent pain and task performance. We tested these contrasting positions using a novel concurrent pain and executive working memory paradigm. Both task difficulty and nociceptive stimulus intensity were individually calibrated for each participant. Participants reported less pain during the working memory task than a visually matched control condition. Conversely, increasing levels of heat incrementally reduced task performance. Path analyses showed that variations in pain completely mediated this effect, and that even within a given heat level, trial-by-trial fluctuations in pain predicted decrements in performance. In sum, these findings argue that overlapping cognitive resources play a role in both pain processing and executive working memory. Future studies could use this paradigm to understand more precisely which components of executive function or other cognitive resources contribute to the experience of pain.
人们普遍认为分心可以减轻疼痛。同样，人们也认为疼痛会分散注意力，从而影响同时进行的、不相关的认知处理，降低困难任务的表现。总的来说，这些假设表明疼痛处理和认知功能涉及一组重叠的、通用的、能力有限的心理资源。然而，对这一观点的实验检验得出的结果喜忧参半，导致了对疼痛与任务表现之间双向关系的常见模型的替代观点。我们使用一种新的同时存在的疼痛和执行工作记忆范式来检验这些相互矛盾的观点。对于每个参与者，任务难度和伤害性刺激强度都是单独校准的。与视觉匹配的对照组相比，参与者在执行工作记忆任务时报告的疼痛较少。相反，随着热量的增加，任务表现逐渐下降。路径分析表明，疼痛的变化完全解释了这种影响，即使在给定的热量水平内，疼痛的逐次波动也预测了表现的下降。总之，这些发现表明，重叠的认知资源在疼痛处理和执行工作记忆中都起着作用。未来的研究可以使用这种范式来更精确地了解执行功能或其他认知资源的哪些成分有助于疼痛的体验。
