Lange G, Steffener J, Cook D B, Bly B M, Christodoulou C, Liu W-C, Deluca J, Natelson B H
Department of Radiology, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-New Jersey Medical School, Newark, 07103, USA.
Neuroimage. 2005 Jun;26(2):513-24. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2005.02.011. Epub 2005 Apr 7.
Individuals with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) often have difficulties with complex auditory information processing. In a series of two Blood Oxygen Level Dependent (BOLD) functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) studies, we compared BOLD signal changes between Controls and individuals with CFS who had documented difficulties in complex auditory information processing (Study 1) and those who did not (Study 2) in response to performance on a simple auditory monitoring and a complex auditory information processing task (mPASAT). We hypothesized that under conditions of cognitive challenge: (1) individuals with CFS who have auditory information processing difficulties will utilize frontal and parietal brain regions to a greater extent than Controls and (2) these differences will be maintained even when objective difficulties in this domain are controlled for. Using blocked design fMRI paradigms in both studies, we first presented the auditory monitoring task followed by the mPASAT. Within and between regions of interest (ROI), group analyses were performed for both studies with statistical parametric mapping (SPM99). Findings showed that individuals with CFS are able to process challenging auditory information as accurately as Controls but utilize more extensive regions of the network associated with the verbal WM system. Individuals with CFS appear to have to exert greater effort to process auditory information as effectively as demographically similar healthy adults. Our findings provide objective evidence for the subjective experience of cognitive difficulties in individuals with CFS.
慢性疲劳综合征（CFS）患者在复杂听觉信息处理方面常常存在困难。在两项血氧水平依赖（BOLD）功能磁共振成像（fMRI）研究中，我们比较了对照组与CFS患者之间的BOLD信号变化。这些CFS患者在复杂听觉信息处理方面有记录在案的困难（研究1），以及没有此类困难的CFS患者（研究2），他们对简单听觉监测和复杂听觉信息处理任务（mPASAT）的表现做出反应。我们假设在认知挑战的条件下：（1）有听觉信息处理困难的CFS患者将比对照组更多地利用额叶和顶叶脑区；（2）即使在该领域的客观困难得到控制时，这些差异仍将保持。在两项研究中都使用了组块设计fMRI范式，我们首先呈现听觉监测任务，然后是mPASAT。在感兴趣区域（ROI）内和之间，使用统计参数映射（SPM99）对两项研究进行了组分析。结果表明，CFS患者能够像对照组一样准确地处理具有挑战性的听觉信息，但会利用与言语工作记忆系统相关的更广泛的网络区域。与人口统计学上相似的健康成年人相比，CFS患者似乎必须付出更大的努力才能有效地处理听觉信息。我们的研究结果为CFS患者认知困难的主观体验提供了客观证据。
