Does the presence of chronic pain affect scores on cognitive screening tests/brief cognitive measures for dementia? A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Objective: Cognitive screening tests can identify potential dementia by indicating a concerning level of cognitive impairment. The older populations for whom this is most relevant are more likely to experience chronic pain, which also impairs cognitive function, but pain's impact on cognitive screening tests specifically remains unknown.

Method: We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis (SR/MA) following PRISMA guidelines evaluating cognitive screening scores in studies involving participants with chronic pain compared with a pain-free control group.

Perceptual impairment in face identification with poor sleep.

Previous studies have shown impaired memory for faces following restricted sleep. However, it is not known whether lack of sleep impairs performance on face identification tasks that do not rely on recognition memory, despite these tasks being more prevalent in security and forensic professions-for example, in photo-ID checks at national borders. Here we tested whether poor sleep affects accuracy on a standard test of face-matching ability that does not place demands on memory: the Glasgow Face-Matching Task (GFMT).