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Reducing State Anxiety Using Working Memory Maintenance
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Published on: July 19, 2017

Shielding cognition from nociception with working memory.

Valéry Legrain1, Geert Crombez, Léon Plaghki

  • 1Department of Experimental Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium. valery.legrain@ugent.be

Cortex; a Journal Devoted to the Study of the Nervous System and Behavior
|October 3, 2012
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Working memory (WM) can suppress pain's disruptive effects by modulating early cortical processing of nociceptive stimuli. Keeping pain information out of WM best protects cognitive tasks from interference.

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Neuroscience of Pain
  • Psychology

Background:

  • Nociceptive stimuli signal potential tissue damage, capturing attention and disrupting cognitive tasks.
  • Working memory (WM) maintains goal priorities, guiding attention during task performance.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate if working memory controls cortical processing of nociceptive stimuli.
  • To determine if working memory modulates the attentional capture by nociceptive stimuli.

Main Methods:

  • Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded during visual tasks with and without working memory load (1-back vs 0-back).
  • Task-irrelevant tactile and nociceptive stimuli were presented before visual targets.
  • Behavioral performance (reaction times) and neural responses to nociceptive stimuli were analyzed.

Main Results:

  • Nociceptive distracters disrupted task performance in the 0-back (no WM load) condition.
  • Working memory (1-back condition) suppressed task disruption by nociceptive distracters.
  • Working memory significantly reduced early nociceptive ERPs, indicating modulation of cortical processing.

Conclusions:

  • Working memory modulates cortical processing of nociceptive input at early stages.
  • Working memory reduces the ability of nociceptive stimuli to capture attention and disrupt tasks.
  • Excluding pain-related information from working memory best protects cognitive processing from pain interference.