 Pain is a multi-sensory experience that can influence cognitive ability. Decision-making, risk-taking, and memory can all be affected. Chronic pain has even been implicated in the loss of frontal cortical gray matter in the brain. Now, a new study published in the journal Anesthesiology shows abdominal pain disrupts visual attention in rats and finds that this effect can be reversed with analgesics. To investigate the behavioral impacts of pain, a team of researchers at Wake Forest School of Medicine used a recently developed variant of the classical five-choice serial reaction time task procedure. In the traditional procedure, the task difficulty remains constant. In the new variant, however, the duration of cue light presentation is systematically adjusted in real time based on the performance of the subject. This allowed the researchers to precisely measure the difficulty level at which the animal is capable of performing efficiently. The procedure requires test animals to identify which of five apertures is illuminated on a wall by poking its nose into that opening, a task that necessitates sustained visual attention. A correct response results in a food reward. Following training sessions, the researchers administered lactic acid to the rats, resulting in acute abdominal inflammation. As a control, these rodents were then administered saline and their test performance was compared under the two scenarios. The researchers found that the lactic acid induced inflammation disrupted the rat's attention and, therefore, performance of the task, with higher lactic acid doses resulting in more pronounced effects. Testing keto-profen and morphine, the team found these known analgesics reversed the disruptive effects of abdominal inflammation. In contrast, these analgesics did not reverse the effects of scopolamine, which disrupts attention but does not cause discomfort. This allowed the researchers to distinguish generalized disruptive effects from those caused by inflammation. The titrating nature of the newly developed novel paradigm used here permits assessment of a wide range of performance capabilities across subjects and experimental manipulations carried out in an automated and objective manner. Using this method, this study provides important insights into the cognitive effects of discomfort and reversal by known analgesics. Further studies are now needed to better understand the mechanism in the brain by which these effects occur.