Van Damme S, Van Hulle L, Spence C, Devulder J, Brusselmans G, Crombez G
Department of Experimental-Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University, Belgium.
Eur J Pain. 2015 May;19(5):706-14. doi: 10.1002/ejp.593. Epub 2014 Sep 23.
Hypervigilance, i.e., excessive attention, is often invoked as a potential explanation for the observation that many individuals with fibromyalgia show a heightened sensitivity to stimulation in various sensory modalities, such as touch and hearing. Compelling evidence for this assumption is, however, lacking. The aim of the present study was to investigate the presence of somatosensory hypervigilance in patients with fibromyalgia.
Fibromyalgia patients (n = 41) and a matched control group (n = 40) performed a tactile change detection task in which they had to detect whether there was a change between two consecutively presented patterns of tactile stimuli presented to various body locations. The task was performed under two conditions: in the unpredictable condition, tactile changes occurred equally often at all possible body locations; in the predictable condition, the majority of tactile changes occurred at one specific body location.
It was hypothesized that the fibromyalgia group would show better tactile change detection in the unpredictable condition and when changes ocurred at unexpected locations in the predictable condition. The results did not support this hypothesis. In neither condition was the fibromyalgia group better than the control group in detecting tactile changes.
No evidence was found to support the claim that patients with fibromyalgia display somatosensory hypervigilance. This finding challenges the idea of hypervigilance as a static feature of fibromyalgia and urges for a more dynamic view in which hypervigilance emerges in situations when bodily threat is experienced.
过度警觉，即过度关注，常被作为一种潜在解释，用于说明许多纤维肌痛患者在各种感觉模态（如触觉和听觉）中对刺激表现出更高的敏感性这一现象。然而，这一假设缺乏令人信服的证据。本研究的目的是调查纤维肌痛患者中是否存在体感过度警觉。
纤维肌痛患者（n = 41）和匹配的对照组（n = 40）进行了一项触觉变化检测任务，他们必须检测呈现给身体不同部位的两个连续触觉刺激模式之间是否存在变化。该任务在两种条件下进行：在不可预测条件下，触觉变化在所有可能的身体部位出现的频率相同；在可预测条件下，大多数触觉变化发生在一个特定的身体部位。
假设纤维肌痛组在不可预测条件下以及在可预测条件下变化发生在意外位置时，会表现出更好的触觉变化检测能力。结果不支持这一假设。在两种条件下，纤维肌痛组在检测触觉变化方面均不比对照组更好。
没有证据支持纤维肌痛患者表现出体感过度警觉这一说法。这一发现挑战了将过度警觉视为纤维肌痛静态特征的观点，并促使人们采用更具动态性的观点，即过度警觉在体验到身体威胁的情况下出现。
