Departamento de Psicoloxía Clínica e Psicobioloxía, Facultade de Psicoloxía, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
Psychological Neuroscience Lab, Psychology Research Centre, School of Psychology, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal.
Sci Rep. 2020 Dec 14;10(1):21904. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-78377-0.
Fibromyalgia (FM) has been associated to an increased processing of somatosensory stimuli, but its generalization to other sensory modalities is under discussion. To clarify this, we studied auditory event-related potentials (AEPs) to stimuli of different intensity in patients with FM and healthy controls (HCs), considering the effects of attention mechanisms and medication. We performed two experiments: In study 1 (n = 50 FM, 60 HCs), the stimuli were presented randomly within the sequence; in study 2 (n = 28 FM, 30 HCs), they were presented in blocks of the same intensity. We analyzed intensity and group effects on N1-P2 amplitude and, only for the FM group, the effect of medication and the correlation between AEPs and clinical variables. Contrary to the expectation, the patients showed a trend of reduced AEPs to the loudest tones (study 1) or no significant differences with the HCs (study 2). Medication with central effects significantly reduced AEPs, while no significant relationships between the N1-P2 amplitude/intensity function and patients' symptoms were observed. The findings do not provide evidence of augmented auditory processing in FM. Nevertheless, given the observed effect of medication, the role of sensory amplification as an underlying pathophysiological mechanism in fibromyalgia cannot be discarded.
纤维肌痛（FM）与躯体感觉刺激的加工增加有关，但它在其他感觉模态中的泛化仍存在争议。为了阐明这一点，我们研究了 FM 患者和健康对照者（HCs）对不同强度听觉事件相关电位（AEPs）的反应，同时考虑了注意机制和药物的影响。我们进行了两项实验：在研究 1（n=50 FM，60 HCs）中，刺激在序列中随机呈现；在研究 2（n=28 FM，30 HCs）中，它们以相同强度的块呈现。我们分析了强度和组效应对 N1-P2 振幅的影响，仅针对 FM 组，分析了药物的影响以及 AEPs 与临床变量之间的相关性。与预期相反，患者表现出对最响亮音调的 AEPs 呈下降趋势（研究 1）或与 HCs 无显著差异（研究 2）。具有中枢作用的药物显著降低了 AEPs，而 N1-P2 振幅/强度函数与患者症状之间未观察到显著相关性。这些发现并未提供 FM 中听觉加工增强的证据。然而，鉴于观察到的药物作用，不能排除感觉放大作为纤维肌痛潜在病理生理机制的作用。
