UMIT Tirol - University for Health Sciences, Medical Informatics and Technology, Institute of Psychology, Austria.
University of Jaén, Department of Psychology, Spain.
Biol Psychol. 2022 Jul;172:108361. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2022.108361. Epub 2022 May 25.
Fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) is a chronic pain condition accompanied by affective symptoms and cognitive impairments. This study investigated central nervous correlates of attentional and emotional processing in FMS. Therefore, event-related potentials were recorded in 26 FMS patients and 26 healthy controls during a dot probe task, which required participants to decide which side of the screen an asterisk was displayed on; the asterisk was immediately preceded by a facial expression (anger, pain, happiness, neutral) on the left or right side. Comorbid depression was also assessed. In patients, N170 amplitude was smaller for anger and pain expressions than for happy expressions, and P2 was greater for pain expressions than for happy expressions. N170 and P2 were unaffected by emotional expressions in controls. LPC was smaller overall in patients than controls. Though reaction times were longer overall in patients than controls, no behavioral effects of emotional stimuli arose in these groups. In contrast, FMS patients with comorbid depression showed less attentional interference due to emotional expressions, and less difficulty disengaging from these stimuli than patients without depression. While the observations concerning N170 suggested facilitated encoding of facial features representing negative rather than positive emotions in FMS and more automatized processing of pain expressions, those for P2 indicated increased attentional resource allocation to pain-related information. Reduced LPC reflects nonspecific deficits in sustained attention in FMS, which is in line with the longer reaction times. Behavioral data suggest lower processing depth of emotional information in patients with comorbid depression.
纤维肌痛综合征（FMS）是一种慢性疼痛疾病，伴有情感症状和认知障碍。本研究旨在探讨 FMS 患者注意力和情绪处理的中枢神经相关性。因此，我们在 26 名 FMS 患者和 26 名健康对照者中记录了事件相关电位，要求参与者判断一个星号显示在屏幕的哪一侧；星号之前，在屏幕的左侧或右侧会立即出现一个面部表情（愤怒、疼痛、快乐、中性）。同时，还评估了共病抑郁的情况。在患者中，愤怒和疼痛表情的 N170 振幅小于快乐表情，而疼痛表情的 P2 大于快乐表情。在对照组中，N170 和 P2 不受情绪表情的影响。与对照组相比，患者的 LPC 总体较小。尽管患者的反应时间总体上长于对照组，但这些组中没有出现情绪刺激的行为效应。相比之下，患有共病抑郁的 FMS 患者由于情绪表达而表现出较少的注意力干扰，并且与没有抑郁的患者相比，他们从这些刺激中解脱出来的难度较小。虽然 N170 的观察结果表明 FMS 患者对面部特征的编码更加容易，这些特征代表负面而不是正面情绪，并且对疼痛表情的处理更加自动化，但 P2 的观察结果表明，对与疼痛相关的信息的注意力资源分配增加。LPC 减少反映了 FMS 中持续注意力的非特异性缺陷，这与较长的反应时间相一致。行为数据表明，共病抑郁患者对情绪信息的处理深度较低。
