Attentional Processing and Interpretative Bias in Functional Neurological Disorder

Bibliographic Data

ID19307472
AuthorsRoxanne Keynejad (0000-0003-4434-3526, King's College London, corresponding author), Roxanne C Keynejad, Edward Fenby (King's College London), Susannah Pick (0000-0003-2001-6723, King's College London), Rona Moss-Morris, Rona Moss‐morri (0000-0002-2927-3446, King's College London), Colette R Hirsch (0000-0003-3579-2418, King's College London), Colette Hirsch, Trudie Chalder (0000-0003-0775-1045, King's College London), Alicia M Hughes (0000-0002-5962-9474, King's College London), T R Nicholson (0000-0002-2350-2332, King's College London)
Year2020
Volume82
Issue6
Pages586-592
Publication date2020-07-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenuePsychosomatic Medicine (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0033-3174 • E-ISSN: 1534-7796
PublisherOvid Technologies (Wolters Kluwer Health) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1097/psy.0000000000000821
PMID32541544
OpenAlexW3034193970
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited53

OBJECTIVE: Altered attentional processing (automatically attending to negative or illness-relevant information) and interpretative biases (interpreting ambiguous information as negative or illness relevant) may be mechanistically involved in functional neurological disorder (FND). Common mechanisms between FND and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) have been proposed but not compared experimentally. METHODS: We compared the cognitive task performance of FND, CFS, and healthy control (HC) groups. The tasks assessed attentional bias toward illness-relevant stimuli (visual probe task), attentional control (attention network task), and somatic interpretations (interpretative bias task), alongside self-reported depression, anxiety, fatigue, and general health. RESULTS: Thirty-seven participants diagnosed with FND, 52 participants diagnosed with CFS, and 51 HC participants were included. Although participants with CFS showed attentional bias for illness-relevant stimuli relative to HC (t = -3.13, p = .002, d = 0.624), individuals with FND did not (t = -1.59, p = .118, d = 0.379). Both the FND (t = 3.08, p = .003, d = 0.759) and CFS (t = 2.74, p = .007, d = 0.548) groups displayed worse attentional control than did the HC group. Similarly, the FND (t = 3.63, p < .001, d = 0.801) and CFS groups (t = 4.58, p < .001, d = 0.909) showed more somatic interpretative bias than did the HC group. CONCLUSIONS: Similar attentional control deficits and somatic interpretative bias in individuals with FND and CFS support potential shared mechanisms underlying symptoms. Interpretative bias toward somatic and illness-relevant stimuli in functional disorders may prove a therapeutic target

Anxiety · Attentional bias · Attentional control · Audiology · Chronic fatigue syndrome · Cognition · Conversion disorder · Depression (economics) · Psychiatry · Body Image and Dysmorphia Studies · Clinical Psychology · Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Research · Medicine · Psychology · Psychosomatic Disorders and Their Treatments

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