Abstract

The present article aims to discuss how pain can affect cognitive performance, focusing our attention on the evaluation of delirium in critical patients and its relation with pain. To achieve this, we will briefly review (i) neural changes and dynamic adaptation processes between pain and attention; (ii) the effects of acute pain in performance and neural activity of attentional tasks; (iii) the implementation process of delirium's evaluation in hospitalized patients with pain at an intensive care unit. We finally discuss these elements in the light of implementing cognitive assessments processes in pain patients.