Need to void and attentional process interrelationships

Objectives To determine whether a strong urge to void could affect a person's attentional performance. To determine whether an attentional task could decrease a strong urge to void a prospective study was performed.Subjects and Methods Healthy adults were asked to perform two neuropsychological tests, the modified P aced A uditory S erial A ddition T est (m PASAT ) and the P sychology E xperiment B uilding L anguage C ontinuous P erformance T est (p CPT ), under two different conditions: no need to void, and a strong urge to void defined by a score of >70/100 mm on a visual analogue scale.Results In all, 21 healthy volunteers were included. There was no statistical difference between the m PASAT scores from the two sessions ( P = 0.57). The mean total error score of the p CPT increased with the individual's urge to void ( P = 0.043). The mean omission score decreased, but was not statistically different ( P = 0.129), the commission error score increased with the urge to void ( P = 0.017), with a shorter reaction time for the inter‐stimuli intervals of 1 ( P  < 0.001) and 2 s ( P = 0.036), suggesting a tendency to hurry.Conclusions A strong urge to void can alter attentional performance, with a tendency to hurry, in healthy volunteers taking part in a sustained attention test pCPT involving the use of the anterior cingulate cortex.