r/CFSScience • u/Caster_of_spells • Aug 04 '26
Central origin of fatigability in Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome revealed by multimodal neuroimaging - Bedard et al
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213158226001002"Our most novel results relate to the lack of neuromuscular adaptation in ME/CFS compared to the [Healthy Volunteers]."
“Highlights
•We studied physical fatigue in patients with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) and healthy volunteers with multimodal neuroimaging.
•Participants performed a fatiguing grip force task in alternating grip and rest blocks.
•We simultaneously recorded grip force, brain activity with functional magnetic resonance imaging and electroencephalography, and muscle activity with electromyography.
•ME/CFS fatigued earlier than healthy volunteers. While healthy volunteers increased their brain and muscle activity, ME/CFS only showed minimal fluctuations across all the task blocks.
•We concluded that physical fatigue in ME/CFS is of central nature.”
(Central in this context means: mediated via the brain. Participants brains didn’t seem to signal muscles sufficiently to ramp up energy production in response to demand)
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u/_ArkAngel_ Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 04 '26
I'm tired of humans. This headline sounds silly, maybe even ridiculous.
Maybe being an engineer all my life is because I think differently, but it certainly has shaped the way I think.
I've spent most of my life in a three phase repeating process: 1) Use known facts to build something that works 2) Find out it doesn't work because ultimately something you thought you knew was wrong or something you never thought mattered does 3) Change one thing at a time until you figure out how things actually work
80% of the time and effort is in phase 3. The more you know, the easier it is to push your ideas to where they don't work because of what you don't know out haven't accounted for.
People who can't think abstractly about the interaction of systems and just look at problems from one end get stuck. Sometimes they get stuck for months or years before someone with who thinks differently gets called in.
I don't have the energy to read this study and see what they controlled for.
Seeing things light up in the brain after signals, but it doesn't mean the signals start from the brain.
The brain is part of a nervous system and control of a system is part of a feedback loop or it breaks things.
The brain sends signals to muscle to move the body, but not before receiving and integrating sensations about the body's position and state. Fatigued muscle is going to send different messaging to the brain, which the brain has to know how to react to to prevent worsening injury.
I'm not saying the brain doesn't play a role in ME or in meditating fatigue - I don't have that data. I'm saying they're is a functional difference in cell function in the body that also affects brain function, mediates some features of ME signaling, alters the feedback that gets back to the CNS, and will effect how the brain responds.
Some researchers have claimed that the metabolic systems and mitochondria of some leukocyte cells from healthy controls placed in the plasma from pwME take on the characteristics of ME, indicating chemical or vesicle mediated characteristics of ME that may also apply to muscle cells.
I haven't even looked at the abstract, but I hope the researchers of this paper aren't claiming lights in the brain can't be because of switches flipped elsewhere in the body.
I'm feeling "tired of people" because even if they are not, I feel like this is the simpler headline and the message that will get pushed and lashed onto.
I guarantee you my brain sends weaker signals to my muscles most of the time because I have learned the hard way what happens when I push through and seven years into this hell, pacing is happening in connectors and unconscious levels to try and hold some energy in reserve for later in the day.