Relationships among Chronic Pain, Hypervigilance and Executive Function

Undergraduate: Chloe Bryen

Faculty Advisor: Mark Hollins
Department: Psychology & Neuroscience

---

This research study explores the effects of a history of chronic pain on current pain perception and executive function. We asked subjects to report any chronic pain earlier in life and to indicate the ages at which it occurred. Two measures of executive function were used. The Operation Span (OSPAN) test measured the ability to move numerical and verbal information in and out of working memory, while the Stroop task tested the ability to suppress salient but irrelevant information in the form of color names. We also studied the ability of one pain to modulate another (conditioned pain modulation, CPM), a perceptual analogue of executive function (Yarnitsky, 2015). To measure CPM, we asked subjects to rate pressure stimuli on one arm while the opposite hand was placed either in painfully cold or thermally neutral water, and compared the two sets of ratings. Catastrophizing and hypervigilance were also measured, because these perceptual/cognitive habits can sometimes influence pain. Analyses will statistically compare these five measures of central processing in individuals with and without a history of chronic pain. This research will help to answer the question of whether chronic pain during childhood and/or adolescence has long-term effects on perception and cognition in young adults.