***TASK*** the task is to summarize an input biomedical literature in six sentences 
    ***INPUT*** the input is a biomedical literature 
    ***OUTPUT*** the output is the summary of an input biomedical literature in six sentences 
    ***DOCUMENTATION*** 
    ***EXAMPLES*** 
    Input: Background In many but not in all neuropsychological studies  buprenorphine-treated opioid-dependent patients have shown fewer cognitive deficits than patients treated with methadone .  In order to examine if hypothesized cognitive advantage of buprenorphine in relation to methadone is seen in clinical patients we did a neuropsychological follow-up study in unselected sample of  buprenorphine- vs. methadone-treated patients . Methods In part I of the study fourteen buprenorphine-treated and 12 methadone-treated patients were tested by  cognitive tests  within two months ( T1 ) , 6 - 9 months ( T2 ) , and 12 - 17 months ( T3 ) from the start of  opioid substitution treatment . Fourteen healthy controls were examined at similar intervals . Benzodiazepine and other psychoactive comedications were common among the patients . Test results were analyzed with repeated measures analysis of variance and planned contrasts . In part II of the study the patient sample was extended to include 36 patients at T2 and T3 . Correlations between cognitive functioning and medication , substance abuse , or demographic variables were then analyzed . Results In part I methadone patients were inferior to healthy controls tests in all tests measuring attention , working memory , or verbal memory .  Buprenorphine patients were inferior to healthy controls in the first working memory task , the Paced Auditory Serial Addition Task and verbal memory . In the second working memory task , the Letter-Number Sequencing , their performance improved between T2 and T3 . In part II only group membership ( buprenorphine vs. methadone ) correlated significantly with attention performance and improvement in the Letter-Number Sequencing . High frequency of substance abuse in the past month was associated with poor performance in the Letter-Number Sequencing . Conclusions The results underline the differences between non-r and omized and r and omized studies comparing cognitive performance in opioid substitution treated patients ( fewer deficits in buprenorphine patients vs. no difference between buprenorphine and methadone patients , respectively ) . Possible reasons for this are discussed Background Because pain often signals the occurrence of potential tissue damage , a nociceptive stimulus has the capacity to involuntarily capture attention and take priority over other sensory inputs . Whether distraction by nociception actually occurs may depend upon the cognitive characteristics of the ongoing activities . The present study tested the role of working memory in controlling the attentional capture by nociception . Methodology and Principal Findings Participants performed visual discrimination and matching tasks  in which visual targets were shortly preceded by a tactile distracter . The two tasks were chosen because of the different effects the involvement of working memory produces on performance , in order to dissociate the specific role of working memory in the control of attention from the effect of general re source dem and s. Occasionally ( i.e. 17 % of the trials ) , tactile distracters were replaced by a novel nociceptive stimulus in order to distract participants from the visual tasks . Indeed , in the control conditions ( no working memory ) , reaction times to visual targets were increased when the target was preceded by a novel nociceptive distracter as compared to the target preceded by a frequent tactile distracter , suggesting attentional capture by the novel nociceptive stimulus . However , when the task required an active rehearsal of the visual target in working memory , the novel nociceptive stimulus no longer induced a lengthening of reaction times to visual targets , indicating a reduction of the distraction produced by the novel nociceptive stimulus . This effect was independent of the overall task dem and s. Conclusion and Significance Loading working memory with pain-unrelated information may reduce the ability of nociceptive input to involuntarily capture attention , and shields cognitive processing from nociceptive distraction . An efficient control of attention over pain is best guaranteed by the ability to maintain active goal priorities during achievement of cognitive activities and to keep pain-related information out of task setting OBJECTIVE The present study examines the possibility that a chronic pain condition , such as fibromyalgia , was associated with deficits in decision making and associative learning . METHODS Fifteen patients with fibromyalgia ( aged 42 - 59 years ) and 15 healthy controls ( aged 39 - 61 years ) participated in the experiment . Subjects completed  anxiety ( STAI ) and depression ( BDI )  question naires , as well as st and ardized neuropsychological tests ( Stroop and WAIS subscales ) . In addition , an emotional decision-making task ( Iowa Gambling Task ) and a conditional associative learning task ( CALT ) were administered to all participants . RESULTS Results indicated that fibromyalgia had a poorer performance than healthy controls in both tasks , showing more perseveration errors in the learning task , and more disadvantageous decisions , as well as a more r and om behavior in the gambling task . Moreover , we observed that poor performance on the associative learning task  was mediated by depression , whereas performance on the gambling task was not influenced by depression . No group differences were found on the st and ardized neuropsychological tests . CONCLUSION These findings indicate that pain and depressive symptoms in fibromyalgia might lead to significant deficits in emotionally charged cognitive tasks . Furthermore , it suggests that chronic pain might impose a high cost on executive control , undermining mainly affective processes involved in learning , memory , attention , and decision-making The aim of the study was to investigate the influence of pain , sedation , pain medications and socio-demographics on cognitive functioning in chronic non-malignant pain patients . Chronic non-malignant pain patients ( N=91 ) treated in a multidisciplinary pain centre were compared with age and sex matched healthy volunteers ( N=64 ) . Furthermore four subgroups of patients were examined : Group 1 ( N=21 ) received no pain medications , group 2 ( N=19 ) were in long-term oral opioid treatment , group 3 ( N=18 ) were treated with antidepressants and /or anticonvulsants and group 4 ( N=33 ) were treated with a combination of long-term oral opioids and antidepressants and /or anticonvulsants . Assessment s comprised pain ( PVAS ) and sedation ( SVAS ) , Continuous Reaction Time ( CRT ) testing for sustained attention , Finger Tapping Test ( FTT ) testing for psychomotor speed , Paced Auditory Serial Addition Task ( PASAT ) testing for information processing and working memory and Mini Mental State Examination ( MMSE ) . CRT and FTT were impaired in the total patient sample . Treatment with opioids was associated with poorer performance of PASAT . High scores of PVAS and SVAS were associated with poor performance of PASAT and CRT , respectively . MMSE seems to be too insensitive for detecting the milder forms of cognitive impairment found in chronic non-malignant patients P3 component of event related cerebral evoked potentials has been applied as an index of information processing in a wide variety of normal and cognition impaired subjects . The present study was undertaken to examine possible changes in central nervous system processing and subjective appraisal , indexed by cerebral evoked potentials ( N200 & P300 ) , in 20 pain free controls and 20 subjects suffering from chronic pain ( cervical spondylosis and low backache , sciatica ) .  St and ard auditory ' Odd ball ' paradigm involving simple discrimination task of concentrating on infrequent ( target ) stimulus and ignoring the frequent stimulus ( non-target ) was employed . Evoked response trial of discriminating 32 target stimuli out of 160 total presented ( 20 % target and 80 % non target , r and omly ) were replicated and analysed by computer . There was significant increase in P3 latency in patients suffering from pain as compared to age and sex matched controls , suggesting change in cognitive functions This study investigates information processing in chronic pain patients by comparing the responses of depressed pain patients , non-depressed pain patients and non-pain control subjects . Each subject contributed two scores : endorsement of adjectives as descriptors of themselves and their best-friends ; and free recall of the presented words . The stimuli consisted of depression-related , pain-related and neutral control adjectives , and each content category was split into negative and positive valence . The four-way interaction between group , reference , content and valence was significant both in the recall data and the endorsement data . Further analysis revealed that depressed pain patients exhibited a bias towards self-referential negative pain words , but not towards self-referential negative depression information . These results are interpreted in line with content specificity theory of information processing and have implication s for targeting cognitive interventions with pain patients & NA ; Cognitive‐behavioural approaches to treatment have become an important part of the clinical management of  chronic pain .  More recent developments in cognitive‐behavioural theory , based on recent developments in the underst and ing and treatment of health anxiety , have emphasized the importance of catastrophizing appraisal s , which drive both attentional processes and behavioural responses , which in turn are believed to be crucial for the maintenance of chronic pain . The experiment conducted here investigated the responses of pain patients ( n=39 ) and controls ( n=71 ) to a behavioural task ( prolonged squeezing a dynamometer ) . Subsequently , the impact of a cognitive task , which fully engaged participants ' attention ( dichotic listening ) was examined . Participants were asked , firstly , to sustain an isometric muscle contraction task ( squeezing ) ; secondly , to learn an attentional dem and ing task ( dichotic listening ) ; thirdly , to recall the discomfort experienced in the squeezing task and lastly , to perform both squeezing and dichotic listening at the same time . The squeezing tasks were experimentally manipulated by attaching a more or less negative label ( ‘ pain tolerance test ’ vs. ‘ muscle stamina and strength test ’ ) . Patients were found to be less able to sustain prolonged muscle tension than controls , but the effect was not evident once the distracting task was introduced ; similar effects were found for discomfort . All participants subsequently recalled the squeezing task as being longer and associated with less discomfort than they had actually recorded it at the time . In the dichotic listening tasks , although patients detected the same number of words overall as controls did , they were less able to focus on the target channel ( i.e. they detected more of the words included as distractors on the unattended channel ) & NA ; Evidence from clinic‐based studies suggests that the fibromyalgia syndrome ( FMS ) is associated with impairment in cognitive function though the mechanism is unclear . The aim of this analysis was to determine whether there is a similar association between chronic widespread pain ( CWP ) , a cardinal feature of FMS , and impaired cognition in a community setting . Men ( n = 3369 , 40–79 years ) were recruited from population registers in eight centres for participation in the European Male Ageing Study ( EMAS ) . The subjects completed a pain question naire and pain manikin , with the presence of CWP defined using the American College of Rheumatology criteria . The cognitive functions measured were visuospatial‐constructional ability and visual memory ( Rey‐Osterrieth Complex Figure [ ROCF ] ) ; visual recognition ( Camden Topographical Recognition Memory test [ CTRM ] ) ; and psychomotor processing speed ( Digit‐Symbol Substitution test [ DSST ] ) . We restricted our analysis to those subjects reporting pain that satisfied the criteria for CWP and those who were pain free . Of these 1539 men [ mean ( SD ) age 60 ( 11 ) years ] , 266 had CWP .  All cognitive test scores declined cross‐sectionally with age ( P < 0.05 ) . In age‐adjusted linear regressions men with CWP had a lower DSST score ( & bgr ; = −2.4 , P < 0.001 ) compared to pain‐free subjects . After adjustment for lifestyle and health factors the association between pain status and the DSST score was attenuated but remained significant ( & bgr ; = −1.02 , P = 0.04 ) . There was no association between CWP and the ROCF‐copy , ROCF‐recall or CTRM scores . CWP is associated with slower psychomotor processing speed among community‐dwelling European men . Prospect i ve studies are required to confirm this observation and explore possible mechanisms for the association 
    Output:
    
High heterogeneity within the field was found with the inclusion of 24 papers using 21 different working memory tests encompassing 9 different working memory constructs and 9 different chronic pain population s. Notwithst and ing high heterogeneity , pooled results from behavioural outcomes reflected a consistent , significant moderate effect in favour of better performance by healthy controls and , with the exception of one study , pooled results from physiological outcomes reflected no evidence for an effect .