Last updated: Mon, Feb 24, 2025
Chronic pain patients experience cognitive problems, especially problems with memory. This has been documented specifically in fibromyalgia patients, but this fact doesn't imply that it especially affects those patients. These cognitive problems include difficulty remembering, problems in completing tasks, and problems focusing attention. Neuropsychological tests have confirmed problems maintaing attention, slowed mental processing speed, and slowed psychomotor speed.
The deficits seem to be caused by (among possibly other things) pain that interferes with attention. Depression, sleep problems, and PTSD that may also be present also impair cognition.1 There is some evidence that under certain conditions opioids can interfere with cognition, but there is also some evidence that opioids can help cognitive functioning if they reduce pain.2