Cognitive Fatigue Weakens the Effects of Distraction on Pain

Perceived pain can be viewed as the result of a competition between nociceptive inputs and other competing goals, such as performing a demanding cognitive task. Task performance, however, suffers when cognitively fatigued. We therefore predicted that cognitive fatigue would weaken the pain-reducing effects of performing a concurrent cognitive task, which would indicate a causal link between fatigue and heightened pain sensitivity. In this study, two groups of pain-free adults performed cognitive tasks while receiving painful heat stimuli. In one group, we induced cognitive fatigue prior to performing the tasks. We found that fatigue led to more pain and worse performance when the task was demanding, suggesting that fatigue weakens one’s ability to distract from pain. These findings show that cognitive fatigue can impair performance on subsequent tasks, and that this impairment can lower a person’s ability to distract from and reduce their pain.