You may never have heard of fibromyalgia. However, surely there is someone near you who suffers from this disease. In fact, according to statistics there are more than a million affected in Spain. And it is that fibromyalgia is a disease with few external signs, but capable of radically changing the life of those who suffer from it.
Where did I leave the car yesterday?This is the type of frequent question in patients with fibromyalgia, a syndrome whose cause is unknown and that appears mainly in women. And it is that suffering fibromyalgia is much more than feeling a generalized chronic pain, its main characteristic. Being extremely tired, having insomnia and presenting symptoms of anxiety and depression are part of this complex clinical picture. One can imagine that facing a new day is quite a challenge for those who suffer from it.
However, not everything is there.Patients often complain of forgetting where they put their glasses, not being able to concentrate when reading, or noticing that their words do not come out easily. Their minds do not work as before and that affects their quality of life, preventing them from working or enjoying their free time.
According to different experts from the University of Michigan, in fibromyalgia appears what has been called “discognition”. The problems in working memory are clear, a capacity by which we maintain and simultaneously manipulate different information in the mind, as when doing a mental calculation.They also have episodic memory difficulties, which allows us to remember where we kept our keys or who we went out with last weekend.In both cases, the alteration appears because there are different information that compete for the available attention and where distractions must be avoided. Another of the most frequent complaints is the difficulty to find words when conversing with other people. In this sense, it seems that they are slower when accessing information from semantic memory. It has recently been described that these patients also have difficulty making decisions, a central aspect of the so-called executive functions.
A different brain
Science has shown that at the brain level, in patients suffering from fibromyalgia , there is a reduction in the volume of the gray matter of the prefrontal cortex correlates with poorer performance in working memory tests. A study with functional magnetic resonance imaging has described that the brain areas that form the attention and distractor inhibition network are less activated in these patients.
But, what to do with those daily forgetfulness and forgetfulness? It is surprising that, despite scientific results, there are hardly any interventions aimed at remedying these types of symptoms . Neuropsychology can develop cognitive training programs aimed at reinforcing these affected capacities. One should not settle. Playing exercises or games that stimulate concentration, learning, calculations and other mental processes has proven to be a good way to keep the brain active. Other innovative initiatives use neurofeedback treatment, casting a halo of optimism in the treatment of some of the symptoms of this disease.
Marisa Fernández, Senior Neuropsychologist, Unobrain
