Bristol Veterinary School, University of Bristol, Langford House, Langford, BS40 5DU, UK.
Highcroft Veterinary Referrals, 615 Wells Rd, Whitchurch, Bristol, BS14 9BE, UK.
Anim Cogn. 2024 Mar 2;27(1):13. doi: 10.1007/s10071-024-01845-x.
Chronic pain in humans is associated with impaired working memory but it is not known whether this is the case in long-lived companion animals, such as dogs, who are especially vulnerable to developing age-related chronic pain conditions. Pain-related impairment of cognitive function could have detrimental effects on an animal's ability to engage with its owners and environment or to respond to training or novel situations, which may in turn affect its quality of life. This study compared the performance of 20 dogs with chronic pain from osteoarthritis and 21 healthy control dogs in a disappearing object task of spatial working memory. Female neutered osteoarthritic dogs, but not male neutered osteoarthritic dogs, were found to have lower predicted probabilities of successfully performing the task compared to control dogs of the same sex. In addition, as memory retention interval in the task increased, osteoarthritic dogs showed a steeper decline in working memory performance than control dogs. This suggests that the effects of osteoarthritis, and potentially other pain-related conditions, on cognitive function are more clearly revealed in tasks that present a greater cognitive load. Our finding that chronic pain from osteoarthritis may be associated with impaired working memory in dogs parallels results from studies of human chronic pain disorders. That female dogs may be particularly prone to these effects warrants further investigation.
人类的慢性疼痛与工作记忆受损有关，但尚不清楚这种情况是否存在于寿命较长的伴侣动物（如狗）中，因为狗特别容易患上与年龄相关的慢性疼痛疾病。与疼痛相关的认知功能障碍可能会对动物与主人互动、适应环境或对训练或新情况做出反应的能力产生不利影响，这反过来又可能影响其生活质量。本研究比较了 20 只患有骨关节炎慢性疼痛的狗和 21 只健康对照狗在空间工作记忆消失物体任务中的表现。与同性别健康对照组的狗相比，发现雌性去势骨关节炎狗成功完成任务的预测概率较低，而雄性去势骨关节炎狗则没有。此外，随着任务中记忆保留间隔的增加，骨关节炎狗的工作记忆表现下降幅度比对照组狗更大。这表明，骨关节炎和潜在的其他与疼痛相关的疾病对认知功能的影响在呈现更大认知负荷的任务中更为明显。我们发现，骨关节炎引起的慢性疼痛可能与狗的工作记忆受损有关，这与人类慢性疼痛障碍的研究结果相似。雌性狗可能特别容易受到这些影响，这需要进一步调查。
