Altered processing of pain‐related information in patients with fibromyalgia

• DOI: 10.1016/j.ejpain.2004.07.012
• Publication Date: 2004-08-21T13:11:59Z
• Authors: Pedro Montoya; Paul Pauli; Anil Batra; Georg Wiedemann
• Keywords: Adult; Cerebral Cortex; Pain Threshold; Fibromyalgia; Emotions; Word Association Tests; Middle Aged; 03 medical and health sciences; Cognition; 0302 clinical medicine; Case-Control Studies; Physical Stimulation; Humans; Female; Evoked Potentials

Abstract Pressure pain thresholds (PPTs) and event‐related potentials (ERPs) elicited by emotional words were analyzed in 12 patients with fibromyalgia (FM) matched healthy subjects. PPTs assessed at the middle finger of both hands, before after experiment. Overall, FM subjects did not differ PPT. Nevertheless, as compared controls characterized a significant enhancement sensitivity from beginning to end experiment indicating long lasting sensitization due repeated stimulation. ERPs recorded during language decision task where had react unpleasant pain‐related emotionally neutral depending on syntactic or orthographic cues. An category effect was observed N400 P300 components ERP, that more positive amplitudes than words. A group P200 amplitudes, showing reduced controls. Furthermore, triggered significantly enhanced late slow waves controls, while comparable found patients. The ERP PPT data suggest are an altered cognitive processing information abnormal adaptation mechanical stimuli, respectively.