Fatigue is associated with altered monitoring and preparation of physical effort in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (2018) van der Meer et al

Is it just me or are they more honest about their views than usual?

I'm not 100% sure how to interpret this but it sounds like they may have shown that fatigued people put in less effort, and believe they are more limited in their activities. This is then interpreted as the beliefs causing the fatigue and limitation. I would be surprised if they properly excluded the ordinary interpretation that fatigue causes this belief and limitation.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2451902218300430

 

Conclusions
These findings link fatigue symptoms to alterations in behavioural choices on effort investment, prefrontal functioning and SMA connectivity, with the DLPFC being associated with prior beliefs about physical abilities.

 

People with a condition that knocks them flat on their arse when they exert themselves tend to be a little cautious about exerting themselves ...

When are the Nobel prizes announced?

 

I've only read the abstract. It looks like a worrying paper because it seems to give scientific validity to the 'false illness beliefs' nonsense by tying it to a test done with a machine and therefore supposedly objective. But it assumes the beliefs of the patients that they can't make more effort are false, rather than a realistic knowledge of the limitations imposed by their illness.

 

"Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is characterized by disabling fatigue, which is suggested to be maintained by dysfunctional beliefs."

"suggested" - well put, the process of hypnotic suggestion comes to mind. "Look at my pendulum and slowly repeat after me: "I have dysfunctional beliefs, I have dysfunctional beliefs, I have…"

 

Wasn't there a study a few years back that actually tested if ME patients puts as much effort into trial/tasks as healthy controls.

They seemed to show that ME patients really were applying themselves and not faking.

I think it was an Australian study. Anyone remember?

Eta - had a quick look but cant find it

 

But they do not say what causes what. The inference they want people to take away, is that lower effort investment is driven by the false illness belief. But from the abstract at least I don't think there is anything supporting that. They don't mention the other possibility of course, that the lower effort investment is sensibly applied to fit within physical limitations.

 

There was this study from Australia:

 

That looks like the one @Dolphin

 

@Woolie dont want to stress you out so feel free to ignore this. Just would appreciate any thoughts you have on this like @Trish i think it is concerning.

 

I don't have access to the full article, and might not get the answer to my question even if I did.

Can anyone tell me, without too much scientific complexity, how this study discriminated between sub-optimal effort due to physical effects, versus sub-optimal effort due to psychological effects.

I have sometimes thought that if you were to do a sort of "frogs legs electrical signal test" on a person in a suitably ethical way, could you then assess if the problem is in the muscles themselves or not, or in the signalling to the muscles. If it showed the problem was the muscles, then that would seem pretty cut and dried. If it showed a signalling problem, then there would still be much scope for a physical problem, but would cut down where to look. But I presume this sort of sanity check must already have been done.

 

Drop the title into sci-hub.hk

 

http://sci-hub.hk/10.1080/13803395.2012.668176

 

Julia Newton at Newcastle University has done that. She took muscle cultures from patients and controls then subjected them to continued electrical stimulation and measured the response. Unsurprisingly, there was significant differences between patients and controls.

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0122982

 

I see this demonstrates muscle fatigue abnormalities compared to healthy controls. Do we know if there is anything similar that proves abnormalities against other fatigueing conditions? (I've only briefly skimmed this article).

 

@Barry Not to my knowledge.

 

Some researchers seem to confuse the directionality between cause and effect due to preconceived biases...