Togo Fumiharu, Lange Gudrun, Natelson Benjamin H, Quigley Karen S
Educational Physiology Laboratory, Graduate School of Education, University of Tokyo, Japan.
J Neuropsychol. 2015 Mar;9(1):1-9. doi: 10.1111/jnp.12030. Epub 2013 Sep 24.
Information processing difficulties are common in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). It has been shown that the time it takes to process a complex cognitive task, rather than error rate, may be the critical variable underlying CFS patients' cognitive complaints. The Attention Network Task (ANT) developed by Fan and colleagues may be of clinical utility to assess cognitive function in CFS, because it allows for simultaneous assessment of mental response speed, also called information processing speed, and error rate under three conditions challenging the attention system. Comparison of data from two groups of CFS patients (those with and without comorbid major depressive disorder; n = 19 and 22, respectively) to controls (n = 29) consistently showed that error rates did not differ among groups across conditions, but speed of information processing did. Processing time was prolonged in both CFS groups and most significantly affected in response to the most complex task conditions. For simpler tasks, processing time was only prolonged in CFS participants with depression. The data suggest that the ANT may be a task that could be used clinically to assess information processing deficits in individuals with CFS.
信息处理困难在慢性疲劳综合征（CFS）患者中很常见。研究表明，处理复杂认知任务所需的时间而非错误率，可能是CFS患者认知主诉背后的关键变量。范及其同事开发的注意力网络任务（ANT）可能对评估CFS患者的认知功能具有临床实用性，因为它可以在三种挑战注意力系统的条件下同时评估心理反应速度（也称为信息处理速度）和错误率。将两组CFS患者（分别患有和未患有共病的重度抑郁症；n = 19和22）的数据与对照组（n = 29）进行比较，结果一致显示，不同条件下各组之间的错误率没有差异，但信息处理速度存在差异。两个CFS组的处理时间都延长了，并且在应对最复杂的任务条件时受到的影响最为显著。对于较简单的任务，只有患有抑郁症的CFS参与者的处理时间延长。数据表明，ANT可能是一项可在临床上用于评估CFS个体信息处理缺陷的任务。
