Mental fatigue is linked with attentional bias for sad stimuli, 2019, Watanabe et al

[Andy]

Previous studies have revealed that patients with chronic fatigue syndrome and affective disorders (such as depression and anxiety disorders) exhibit a vigilant attentional bias toward negative emotional stimuli. However, it remains unclear whether the change in an attentional bias for negative emotional stimuli can be induced by mental fatigue in healthy individuals. To address this question, we examined healthy participants’ (n = 27) performance in a visual probe task and emotional Stroop task before and after the mental-fatigue-inducing task. We demonstrated that acute mental fatigue induced by the long-lasting working memory task led to the alteration of cognitive processing of negative emotional information in the healthy volunteers.

Open access at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-45428-0

 

[Wonko]

So possibly the entire world's resources should be devoted to making us happier, at least until they find a 'cure'?

 

[Diluted-biscuit]

It’s hard not to swear at these things sometimes

 

[duncan]

"...50-75% of patients with CFS had a lifetime history of Major Depressive Disorder..."

 

[Keela Too]

How do they justify the assertion in the 1st sentence?

 

[dangermouse]

 

[inox]

Oh, the wording of these things - clearly showing their own bias...

What they found was actually:

We demonstrated that acute mental fatigue induced by the long-lasting working memory task led to the alteration of cognitive processing of negative emotional information in the healthy volunteers.

Demonstrating that it's normal even for healthy people that mental fatigue in itself can alter your cognitions.

If they could just for a second concider it's not 'attention to', but 'inability to filter out'.

 

[Hoopoe]

This might be similar to people being more irritable and cranky when they are really exhausted.

Which I think happens because in an exhausted state there is an inability to resist stress, so people tend to react to minor things. That seems similar to the "inability to filter out" idea by @inox.

 

[Wonko]

It's quite a while since people who aren't psyches figured this out.

It was deemed, for some insane reason according to current medical thinking, that it was better to keep the arrows and other pointy things out of people, at least some people, rather than have them wasting their time and attention on dealing with being full of holes.

So people came up with the idea of armour, and walls, and other related things.

Of course we now know this was a flawed philosophy, that rather than trying to prevent themselves and others from suffering holes, that people should instead respect the holes, work with the holes, and try and figure out what the hole wants, what would mitigate its negative influence on their lives.

But above all they should accept the hole, realise that it only exists in their head, that is has no physical reality and therefore should not entitle them to any form of social welfare.

 

[rvallee]

This almost reads like a cry for help. I don't understand why this warrants publication in Nature. It basically "confirms" that tired people (which is obviously the operating definition they are using for CFS) have lower attention. OK. That is what is expected. And? Also WTH is sad stimuli? Not everyone finds the same things sad. Sadness is extremely subjective, probably more than anything as even joyous things for most can bring absolute sadness to some because of a very personal experience.

I have no idea where they got the "studies have shown vigilant attention" thing. You can literally use that to say anything you want, as there is basically psychological research out there showing everything you may want to believe. It's basically "some people are saying", it means nothing. The association with affective disorders shows a clear bias, there is no reason to mix these things together. It's widely known that terminal cancer patients are depressed, it is still not the same as MDD.

The early days of science were all about classification, understanding what makes things distinct from one another. This reversal encouraging bunching up different concepts based on a superficial personal interpretation is a repudiation of centuries of scientific progress. I don't understand how anyone thinks this will hold up or provide anything of value. Let alone the people at Nature. Really amateur work.

 

[Jaybee00]

critical, vital research.....

Probably cost $100-200,000 to do this incl. pay for the six researcher's time---next time please just have them write a check directly to OMF, so much more efficient.

 

[BruceInOz]

It always seems to me that the usual BPS line is that our fatigue (mental or physical) is caused by our inappropriate attentional bias to emotional stimuli (usually a result of assuming the causation direction from an observed correlation). But this seems to be saying that the causation, in one case at least, goes in the other direction. The fatigue causes the change in attentional bias, which actually makes far more sense. Doesn't this study undermine a lot of the BPS babble?

 

[Wonko]

If anyone understood it then yes, but they never understand such things.

 

[inox]

I may very well be wrong, but my gut feeling is still that these days, if you like to study 'anything human behaviour' - just angle it towards CFS (and I'm intentionally not using ME) - and you'll get both funding and publication.

Or maybe just the more generally known ME gets, we will also attract more of the more pointless studies

 

[rvallee]

It always seems to me that the usual BPS line is that our fatigue (mental or physical) is caused by our inappropriate attentional bias to emotional stimuli (usually a result of assuming the causation direction from an observed correlation). But this seems to be saying that the causation, in one case at least, goes in the other direction. The fatigue causes the change in attentional bias, which actually makes far more sense. Doesn't this study undermine a lot of the BPS babble?

I really would like it for them to address people like me, stoics who completely defy every single assumption they bring forward. Hypervigilant? Worry too much? Puh-lease. I once got within 2 inches from a car accident and just kept talking normally through and after. I would be a good fit for an official portrait next to the definition of DGAF. Not that I don't care, it's just that if you take the definition of histrionics and go exactly to the polar opposite, you'll find me there, chilling and generally worry-free (other than, you know, the whole life-ruining disease and all).

Somehow we're just an afterthought, a major exception no one bothers addressing because no one makes them address it. I would actually support this kind of research, to have them thoroughly test their own assumptions, aka step 1 that should have been done decades ago. It's not even that hard. I'd even participate if they made it accessible (and done competently, which they normally avoid like the plague, so I won't hold my breath).

The model "CFS" patient they invented is basically a strawman, a caricature that exists only in their minds, some mythical creature of pure worry and hypervigilance. What tripe.

 

[duncan]

Not that I don't care, it's just that if you take the definition of histrionics and go exactly to the polar opposite, you'll find me there, chilling and generally worry-free (other than, you know, the whole life-ruining disease and all).

And writing with skill and style like most professional writers I know would sell their souls to do.

 

[rvallee]

And writing with skill and style like most professional writers I know would sell their souls to do.

Thanks It means a lot. It's one of the things I miss doing the most. Now it feels like playing piano with boxing gloves. There's the occasional melody, it just comes with a whole lot of dischord and ranting. I can deal with a broken body, I just really want my brain back.

 

[Esther12]

I've not looked at this paper beyond the abstract, and am personally a bit suspicious of this method for showing anything of value, but presumably this finding is useful for challenging those who imply Moss-Morris's work is useful for indicating attentional bias plays a role in causing the symptoms of CFS? Of course, using some sort of non-CFS fatigued control group really should have been a part of Moss-Morris's initial work, but there you go.

 

[Forbin]

"...50-75% of patients with CFS had a lifetime history of Major Depressive Disorder..."

The paper from which this citation was gleaned also says:

Of special note is the issue of how psychiatric prevalence in chronic fatigue syndrome is determined. The Diagnostic Interview Schedule (137), a highly structured interview designed to be administered by lay interviewers, is the instrument most commonly used to ascertain psychopathology in chronic fatigue syndrome. Thus, by rigidly attributing unexplained symptoms such as fatigue to psychiatric causes, it may overestimate the prevalence of psychiatric disorders in chronic fatigue syndrome patients.

The same paper says:

Although chronic fatigue syndrome has significant symptom overlap and comorbidity with psychiatric disorders, several lines of research suggest that the illness may be distinct from psychiatric disorders.

The claim that "25% and 50%–75% of patients have a current or a lifetime history of major depression, respectively" is apparently an amalgam of 5 different citations in a paper by Buchwald (so, in the Watanabe paper, it's a citation based on yet other citations in a different review paper).

Two of those five papers are from the cutting edge of 1989 and two are from 1991 (so 1988 Holmes criteria, at best). One is from 1996. Two are by Wessely (1989 & 1996).

I haven't checked, but some of those early papers may have been influenced by the infamous 1990 JAMA paper that found "higher frequency of DSM III depressive illness" in patients than controls. The only problem there was that only 25% of the subjects even met the 1988 Holmes criteria for CFS.