Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, Montessorilaan 3, Nijmegan, The Netherlands.
Clin J Pain. 2011 Jan;27(1):70-5. doi: 10.1097/AJP.0b013e3181f15cf5.
Previous studies have revealed that memory performance is diminished in chronic pain patients. Few studies, however, have assessed multiple components of memory in a single sample. It is currently also unknown whether attentional problems, which are commonly observed in chronic pain, mediate the decline in memory. Finally, previous studies have focused on middle-aged adults, and a possible detrimental effect of aging on memory performance in chronic pain patients has been commonly disregarded. This study, therefore, aimed at describing the pattern of semantic, working, and visual and verbal episodic memory performance in participants with chronic pain, while testing for possible contributions of attention and age to task performance.
Thirty-four participants with chronic pain and 32 pain-free participants completed tests of episodic, semantic, and working memory to assess memory performance and a test of attention.
Participants with chronic pain performed worse on tests of working memory and verbal episodic memory. A decline in attention explained some, but not all, group differences in memory performance. Finally, no additional effect of age on the diminished task performance in participants with chronic pain was observed.
Taken together, the results indicate that chronic pain significantly affects memory performance. Part of this effect may be caused by underlying attentional dysfunction, although this could not fully explain the observed memory decline. An increase in age in combination with the presence of chronic pain did not additionally affect memory performance.
先前的研究表明，慢性疼痛患者的记忆表现会下降。然而，很少有研究在单个样本中评估记忆的多个成分。目前也不清楚注意力问题是否会导致记忆下降，而注意力问题在慢性疼痛中很常见。最后，先前的研究集中在中年成年人身上，通常忽略了衰老对慢性疼痛患者记忆表现的不利影响。因此，本研究旨在描述慢性疼痛患者的语义、工作、视觉和言语情景记忆表现模式，同时测试注意力和年龄对任务表现的可能贡献。
34 名慢性疼痛患者和 32 名无痛患者完成了情景记忆、语义记忆和工作记忆测试，以评估记忆表现和注意力测试。
慢性疼痛患者在工作记忆和言语情景记忆测试中表现较差。注意力下降解释了部分但不是全部记忆表现的组间差异。最后，在慢性疼痛患者中，年龄对任务表现下降没有额外影响。
综上所述，结果表明慢性疼痛会显著影响记忆表现。这种影响的一部分可能是由潜在的注意力功能障碍引起的，尽管这不能完全解释观察到的记忆下降。年龄的增加与慢性疼痛的存在相结合，不会对记忆表现产生额外的影响。
