Objective: Persistent pain and cognitive impairment are each common in older adults. Mental flexibility, memory, and information-processing speed may be particularly vulnerable in the aging brain. We investigated the effects of persistent pain on these cognitive domains among community-dwelling, nondemented older adults.
Setting: Older Adult Pain Management Program.
Design: A total of 56 new patients (mean age 76.1 years) were recruited to describe 1) rates of persistent pain conditions and pain intensity; 2) cognition (mental flexibility, short-term memory, and psychomotor speed); 3) severity of depression; and 4) sleep quality. All patients had nonmalignant pain for at least 3 months. Pain intensity was measured with the McGill Pain Questionnaire and depression severity with the 17-item Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression. Cognition was assessed with 1) Mini-Mental State Exam; 2) Number-Letter-Switching and Motor Speed subtests of the Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System Trail Making Test; 3) Digit Symbol Subtest (DSST) of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scales-III; and 4) free and paired recall of the DSST digit-symbol pairs. Multiple linear regression modeled whether these variables predicted poorer cognitive outcomes, after adjusting for the effects of opioids, sleep impairment, depression, medical comorbidity, and years of education.
Results: In univariate analysis, pain severity was associated with a greater impairment on number-letter switching (r = -0.42, P = 0.002). This association remained after adjusting for the effects of depression, sleep, medical comorbidity, opioid use, and years of education (t = -1.97, P = 0.056).
Conclusions: In community dwelling older adults, neither pain nor mood was associated with measures of short-term memory or information-processing speed. However, pain severity was associated with decreased performance on a test of number-letter switching, indicating a relationship between pain and mental flexibility.
Download full-text PDF |
Source |
|---|---|
| http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2946642 | PMC |
| http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1526-4637.2006.00212.x | DOI Listing |
Publication Analysis
Top Keywords
Similar Publications
Psychological inflexibility and anxiety among house officers in a hospital in Selangor, Malaysia.
East Asian Arch Psychiatry
December 2024
Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health, Hospital Tengku Ampuan Rahimah, Klang, Selangor, Malaysia.
Background: Anxiety is common among house officers. Psychological inflexibility increases the risk of anxiety. This study aimed to determine the associations between anxiety and sociodemographic factors, work-related variables, and psychological inflexibility, and to identify predictors for anxiety among house officers in a hospital in Malaysia.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFResources, support, and integration as potential barriers and facilitators to the implementation of blended therapy in the routine care of inpatients: a qualitative study.
Front Psychiatry
December 2024
Clienia Schlössli AG, Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Oetwil am See, Switzerland.
While research on blended therapy (BT), i.e. the combination of face-to-face and digital treatment, has grown rapidly, integrating BT into routine practice remains limited, especially in inpatient settings.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPrefrontal cortex contribution in transitive inference task through the interplay of beta and gamma oscillations.
Commun Biol
December 2024
Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Sapienza University, Rome, Italy.
Transitive inference allows people to infer new relations between previously experienced premises. It has been hypothesized that this logical thinking relies on a mental schema that spatially organizes elements, facilitating inferential insights. However, recent evidence challenges the need for these complex cognitive processes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBidimensionally partitioned online sequential broad learning system for large-scale data stream modeling.
Sci Rep
December 2024
College of Information Engineering, Yancheng Teachers University, Yancheng, 224002, China.
Incremental broad learning system (IBLS) is an effective and efficient incremental learning method based on broad learning paradigm. Owing to its streamlined network architecture and flexible dynamic update scheme, IBLS can achieve rapid incremental reconstruction on the basis of the previous model without the entire retraining from scratch, which enables it adept at handling streaming data. However, two prominent deficiencies still persist in IBLS and constrain its further promotion in large-scale data stream scenarios.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe brain selectively allocates energy to functional brain networks under cognitive control.
Sci Rep
December 2024
Centre of Precision Rehabilitation for Spinal Pain (CPR Spine), School of Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK.
Network energy has been conceptualized based on structural balance theory in the physics of complex networks. We utilized this framework to assess the energy of functional brain networks under cognitive control and to understand how energy is allocated across canonical functional networks during various cognitive control tasks. We extracted network energy from functional connectivity patterns of subjects who underwent fMRI scans during cognitive tasks involving working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility, in addition to task-free scans.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWant AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?
Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!