Hypervigilance for innocuous tactile stimuli in patients with fibromyalgia: An experimental approach
Background Hypervigilance, i.e., excessive attention, is often invoked as a potential explanation for the observation that many individuals with fibromyalgia show a heightened sensitivity to stimulation in various sensory modalities, such as touch and hearing. Compelling evidence for this assumption...
Saved in:
| Published in: | European journal of pain Vol. 19; no. 5; pp. 706 - 714 |
|---|---|
| Main Authors: | , , , , , |
| Format: | Journal Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
England
Blackwell Publishing Ltd
01-05-2015
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Get full text |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| Summary: | Background
Hypervigilance, i.e., excessive attention, is often invoked as a potential explanation for the observation that many individuals with fibromyalgia show a heightened sensitivity to stimulation in various sensory modalities, such as touch and hearing. Compelling evidence for this assumption is, however, lacking. The aim of the present study was to investigate the presence of somatosensory hypervigilance in patients with fibromyalgia.
Methods
Fibromyalgia patients (n = 41) and a matched control group (n = 40) performed a tactile change detection task in which they had to detect whether there was a change between two consecutively presented patterns of tactile stimuli presented to various body locations. The task was performed under two conditions: in the unpredictable condition, tactile changes occurred equally often at all possible body locations; in the predictable condition, the majority of tactile changes occurred at one specific body location.
Results
It was hypothesized that the fibromyalgia group would show better tactile change detection in the unpredictable condition and when changes ocurred at unexpected locations in the predictable condition. The results did not support this hypothesis. In neither condition was the fibromyalgia group better than the control group in detecting tactile changes.
Conclusions
No evidence was found to support the claim that patients with fibromyalgia display somatosensory hypervigilance. This finding challenges the idea of hypervigilance as a static feature of fibromyalgia and urges for a more dynamic view in which hypervigilance emerges in situations when bodily threat is experienced. |
|---|---|
| Bibliography: | Figure S1. Flow chart of the study.Figure S2. The 3 panels illustrate the different trial types in the predictable condition. The filled grey circles represent the tactor locations that were used in the experiment. The white dots represent active tactor locations. The square indicates the body location on which a tactile change is most likely to occur (in this example, the right forearm). Panel A provides an example of a valid change trial in which a tactor of the first pattern becomes inactive in the second pattern, and the tactor at the 'predicted' location becomes active instead. Panel B provides an example of a valid change trial in which the tactor at the 'predicted' location of the first pattern becomes inactive in the second pattern, and another tactor becomes active instead. Panel C provides an example of an invalid change trial, in which the tactile change does not involve the 'predicted' body location. ArticleID:EJP593 Ghent University - No. BOF10/BIP/015; No. BOF09/DOC/013 University of Oxford istex:700296BDF866AF359EF4B0B2663D570AEE0C1262 ark:/67375/WNG-GHH9ZGPC-9 Conflicts of interest Funding sources The study was supported by a Bilateral Scientific Cooperation project between Ghent University and the University of Oxford, funded by the Special Research Fund of Ghent University (BOF10/BIP/015). L. Van Hulle was funded by the Special Research Fund of Ghent University (BOF09/DOC/013). None declared. ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 |
| ISSN: | 1090-3801 1532-2149 |
| DOI: | 10.1002/ejp.593 |