Fibromyalgia and Working Memory

The Effect of Fibromyalgia and Working Memory

Do you struggle to remember a phone number for the 30 seconds it takes to dial it? Is it difficult to switch from one task to another?

Working memory is just what it sounds like it’s the memory you can work with at any given time, it allows you to switch tasks, to work a math problem in your head, and to remember a phone number from the time you look it up until you walk across the room and type it in your phone (despite interruptions).

If you are reading all of these thinking those are things you can’t do anymore, you aren’t alone.

I know that I can’t work out a math problem in my head that involves more than 3 digits, and if I don’t write that number down you can bet I won’t remember it.

I do good to remember what I read long enough to transfer it and turn it into an article that you can comprehend –it often requires rereading several times and writing sentence by sentence as I go back and forth.

Word-stem completion tasks are one way to assess working memory. Duschek, Werner, Winkelmann, and Wanker used word-stem completion tasks to compare implicit memory function in Fibromyalgia patients with that of healthy controls.

Word stem completion tasks are simple tasks that present the first few letters of a word and the participant is asked to finish the word with the first word that comes to mind. For instance, you might be presented with the letters HO_____ and asked to give the first word that comes to mind.

One major aspect of the word stem completion tasks is that prior to being given the word stem the participant is primed by being presented with a list of words. The word stem completion task acts to test implicit memory – memory that exists and is called upon without specific intent.

Since the participant wasn’t told they needed to remember those words and are not aware that the words they were presented have anything to do with the upcoming task they don’t associate the two.

BTW, This is pretty much the same thing that many illusionists use when they “predict” what number you are going to pick, or what word you are going to write down. They’ve primed you in advance to choose the word or number that they want you to choose.

This study compared 18 Fibromyalgia patients with 24 healthy controls. All participants were female, as are the majority of those diagnosed with Fibromyalgia.

The participants were shown a series of 60 adjectives unrelated to pain, health, or disease. After being presented with these words the participants played Tetris for 5 minute to distract them. They were then presented with 120 word stems in random order.

Sixty of the word stems included the first three letters of words that were presented in the first portion of the study, the other half of the word stems began with letters not previously primed.

Implicit memory was rated based on the number of word stems completed using words for which the participants had previously been primed.

Results of the analysis of the study indicated that Fibromyalgia patients responded with the correct primed responses significantly less often than the healthy controls.

This study indicates that implicit memory function may be impaired in those with Fibromyalgia, possibly as a result of decreased attentional resources, or impeded memory retrieval.

This indicates that those with Fibromyalgia do have reduced task performance and impaired memory that is not affected by their motivational or emotional state. It’s not that they aren’t trying, they simply aren’t able.

The small sample size in this study does present an issue; however, the results do serve to support previous studies that have indicated that pain severity is directly tied to attention and memory. This may be a result of the overlapping of the brain areas that are responsible for pain processing and cognition, and the inability of those brain regions to provide attention to both the pain and cognitive memory sources at the same time.

Once again more and more studies seem to be indicating that neurological issues are at play in Fibromyalgia. Do you find that you have trouble with your working memory? Do you forget what you went into a room for before you ever get there? Does any interruption cause you to lose your train of thought?

Related Posts:

• Fibromyalgia and brain function
• What’s it like living with fibro fog?
• Effects of stress & relaxation on fibromyalgia
• Altered brain activity related to fibro fog

References:

Duschek, S., Werner, N. S., Winkelmann, A., & Wankner, S. (2013). Implicit memory function in fibromyalgia syndrome. Behavioral Medicine, 39(1), 11-16.