Department of Psychology, Faculty of Health Sciences, Rey Juan Carlos University, 28922 Madrid, Spain.
Int J Psychophysiol. 2013 May;88(2):182-92. doi: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2013.03.017. Epub 2013 Apr 2.
Evidence coming from neuropsychological studies has showed the presence of cognitive alterations in fibromyalgia. Such dysfunctions are especially remarkable when the set in motion of executive control processes, such as inhibition, is required to perform successfully; however, neural data related to these mechanisms are very scarce. Present study tried to characterize cognitive inhibition mechanisms, as part of the attentional control functions, in patients with fibromyalgia. Participants (two groups: fibromyalgia patients and healthy control participants) were asked to perform in an emotional Stroop task while event-related potentials (ERP) were recorded. Four different emotional interference conditions were created: fibromyalgia symptom-related words, arousing-negative, arousing-positive and neutral words. Brain activity and behavioral data were analyzed. Principal component analyses were employed to reliably define ERP components along with a source-estimation technique. Symptom-related words elicited greater frontal P450 amplitudes and enhanced activation within right inferior frontal gyrus as compared to the rest of stimuli. This effect was only true for the fibromyalgia group. Behavioral contrasts, however, did not produce significant differences. Scalp and source estimation findings suggest the presence of a specific difficulty in cognitive inhibition in fibromyalgia patients (under conditions intimately linked with the core concerns of their disease). Data point to the involvement of right inferior frontal cortices in this inefficient mechanism, which might cause an enhanced and dysfunctional effort of processing to achieve only a comparable performance to healthy people. Implications of these results are discussed. Nevertheless, further investigations are needed to better understand dysfunctional cognition in fibromyalgia.
神经心理学研究的证据表明，纤维肌痛患者存在认知改变。当需要执行抑制等执行控制过程时，这些功能尤其明显；然而，与这些机制相关的神经数据非常稀缺。本研究试图描述纤维肌痛患者的认知抑制机制，作为注意力控制功能的一部分。参与者（两组：纤维肌痛患者和健康对照组）被要求在情绪 Stroop 任务中表现，同时记录事件相关电位 (ERP)。创建了四个不同的情绪干扰条件：纤维肌痛症状相关词、唤醒负性词、唤醒正性词和中性词。分析了大脑活动和行为数据。采用主成分分析可靠地定义了 ERP 成分以及源估计技术。与其他刺激相比，症状相关词引起更大的额部 P450 振幅和右额下回内的增强激活。这种效应仅适用于纤维肌痛组。然而，行为对比并没有产生显著差异。头皮和源估计结果表明，纤维肌痛患者存在特定的认知抑制困难（在与他们疾病核心关注点密切相关的条件下）。数据表明，右额下回皮质参与了这种低效的机制，这可能导致处理过程的增强和功能障碍，以达到与健康人相当的表现。讨论了这些结果的含义。然而，需要进一步的研究来更好地理解纤维肌痛中的认知障碍。
