Bridging Exercise Science, Cognitive Psychology, and Medical Practice: Is “Cognitive Fatigue” a Remake of “The Emperor’s New Clothes”?

The full text of this is now available: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01246/full

I'll leave it to others to decide whether there is anything of use in this or alternatively, if there is anything particularly problematic.

 

Perhaps they should just stop and recognize that fatigue as a subject is too broad. Instead of trying to find common areas to address in all patients with diseases who have an ill defined "fatigue" as a symptom, they simply tackle the underlying problem?

They would do better, in my opinion, to examine how much further distress and delay in diagnosis they inflict on patients, trying to tackle a symptom they haven't even clearly defined.

 

I do not have much hope of anything useful for PwME, from the abstract:

"The most promising common feature to cognitive science, exercise physiology and clinical practice is the notion of “perceived effort.” "
Double "" doesn't really work does it?

Most of the authors are from Belgium. Have never heard of:

• 4Endurance Research Group, University of Kent, Chatham, United Kingdom

 

The following is an extract from their "Research News". This Prof is not mentioned in the article.

In 2018, 18 Sep is a Tuesday, so presumably this happened last year. However, it still gives a flavour of what they do
Last sentence sounds particularly weird.

"On Monday 18th of September, Professor Samuele Marcora will present his research on ‘perception of effort’ at the prestigious research meeting organised by the Royal Society titled, ‘Understanding the Neurobiology of Fatigue’. Perception of effort is the conscious sensation of how hard, heavy and strenuous a physical task is. An increase in perception of effort is one of the main features of fatigue in both athletes and patients. Furthermore, the perception of effort is considered an important barrier to physical activity in the general population. With regards to its proximate cause, Professor Marcora will discuss whether the perception of effort is generated by brain processing of multiple afferent sensory signals about the physiological condition of the body, or corollary discharges from premotor and motor areas of the cortex. With regards to its ultimate cause, Professor Marcora will present an alternative to the current proposal that perception of effort is part of a complex system aimed at preventing a catastrophic failure of homoeostasis (eg myocardial ischaemia, rigor mortis in the active muscles, or even death) during excessively intense and/or prolonged physical tasks. Instead, Professor Marcora proposes that perception of effort is part of a complex system aimed at maintaining a relatively high level of body fat which, in turn, has several fitness functions. Finally, he will discuss the translation of this psychobiological research into practical interventions to treat fatigue, improve human performance and reduce physical inactivity in the general population."

 

Punctuation aside: Normally if you're using a quote within a quote, you'd use " and ' to differentiate them. So if you normally use double quotation marks ("like this"), the example would be:

"She said 'no'!"

If it's the other way around, it would be:

'She said "no"!'

That way you can avoid "".

In the example above, the UK convention is to punctuate outside the short quote, too. So:

"The most promising common feature to cognitive science, exercise physiology and clinical practice is the notion of 'perceived effort'."

That's because the quoted text doesn't necessarily end with a punctuation mark, so you don't add it in or you'd be changing the quoted text. It also makes things somewhat easier on the eye than .""

ETA: Sorry for the tangent! I find punctuation too much fun, clearly!

 

Thanks @adambeyoncelowe.

We now all know who to send any proof-reading to. (My Grandmother always said that a sentence shouldn't end with a preposition. Is that still the case?)

Did you stress these skills to NICE as they may well come in handy with the Guideline process?

 

I did. Thank you. I suggested it might make me a good note-taker too.

You're not supposed to end on a preposition, but many people do it. It's not strictly incorrect, but it may look sloppy if you do it all the time. But always avoiding prepositions at the end of a sentence can make your writing seem very formal, too, so it's a trade-off.

Likewise, schools tell us not to start sentences with conjunctions either, but lots of writers do this for various reasons--it can be quite effective.

 

I worry about this notion of “perceived fatigue” or “perceived effort” being used anywhere near ME (or any illness actually)!

The body gives sensations of fatigue (and pain too) for good reasons. Something is broken. So the body needs to be protected from doing further damage by over-using the body (or body part) in question. Just because the cause of the fatigue (or pain) is not apparent using current medical knowledge does not mean that the sensation should be discounted, or deemed inappropriate!

This is a worrying notion. Like over-sensitivity, or central sensitisation, it seems to me, it will also lead to more BPS ruminations on how to overcome our inappropriate sensations.

But you all know this already. Meh

Edits for clarity

 

The good professor's theory also seems like a way to get obesity as well as fatigue into the grant generating machine. Now we will have all these people who are bankrupting the NHS treated by making them admit their sins.