Bridging Exercise Science, Cognitive Psychology, and Medical Practice: Is “Cognitive Fatigue” a Remake of “The Emperor’s New Clothes”?

[Dolphin]

The full text of this is now available: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01246/full

I'll leave it to others to decide whether there is anything of use in this or alternatively, if there is anything particularly problematic.

Conceptual Analysis ARTICLE

Front. Psychol., 10 September 2018 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01246

Bridging Exercise Science, Cognitive Psychology, and Medical Practice: Is “Cognitive Fatigue” a Remake of “The Emperor’s New Clothes”?
Nathalie Pattyn1,2,3*, Jeroen Van Cutsem3,4, Emilie Dessy1,2 and Olivier Mairesse1,2,5

• 1VIPER Research Unit, Royal Military Academy, Brussels, Belgium
• 2Department of Experimental and Applied Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium
• 3Human Physiology Research Group, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium
• 4Endurance Research Group, University of Kent, Chatham, United Kingdom
• 5Sleep Unit, CHU Brugmann, Brussels, Belgium

Fatigue is such a multifaceted construct it has sprouted specific research fields and experts in domains as different as exercise physiology, cognitive psychology, human factors and engineering, and medical practice.

It lacks a consensus definition:

it is an experimental concept, a symptom, a risk, a cause (e.g., of performance decrement) and a consequence (e.g., of sleep deprivation).

This fragmentation of knowledge leads to slower dissemination of novel insights, and thus to a poorer research.

Indeed, what may seem as a novel result in one field, may very well be old news in another, hence leading to this “innovation” being a scientific equivalent to the emperor’s new clothes.

The current paper aims to describe the common denominator in the different areas of expertise where fatigue is investigated.

Indeed, rather than focusing on the differences in semantics and conceptualization, we hope that identifying common concepts may be inductive of easier multidisciplinary research.

Considering the vastness of fatigue research in all areas identified as relevant-cognitive science, exercise physiology, and medical practice, this analysis has not the ambition to be an exhaustive review in all domains.

We have reviewed the fatigue concepts and research in these areas and report the ones that are used to describe the proposed common model to be further investigated.

The most promising common feature to cognitive science, exercise physiology and clinical practice is the notion of “perceived effort.”

This allows to account for interindividual differences, as well as for the situational variations in fatigue.

It is applicable to both mental and physical constructs.

It integrates motivational and emotional dimensions.

It overcomes current polemics in various research fields, and it does not draw on any semantic ambiguity.

We thus suggest a new model of fatigue and performance, whether this performance is mental or physical; and whether it is in a clinical range or relates to optimal functioning.

 

[Invisible Woman]

Perhaps they should just stop and recognize that fatigue as a subject is too broad. Instead of trying to find common areas to address in all patients with diseases who have an ill defined "fatigue" as a symptom, they simply tackle the underlying problem?

They would do better, in my opinion, to examine how much further distress and delay in diagnosis they inflict on patients, trying to tackle a symptom they haven't even clearly defined.

 

[MEMarge]

I do not have much hope of anything useful for PwME, from the abstract:

"The most promising common feature to cognitive science, exercise physiology and clinical practice is the notion of “perceived effort.” "
Double "" doesn't really work does it?

Most of the authors are from Belgium. Have never heard of:

• 4Endurance Research Group, University of Kent, Chatham, United Kingdom

 

[MEMarge]

The following is an extract from their "Research News". This Prof is not mentioned in the article.

In 2018, 18 Sep is a Tuesday, so presumably this happened last year. However, it still gives a flavour of what they do
Last sentence sounds particularly weird.

"On Monday 18th of September, Professor Samuele Marcora will present his research on ‘perception of effort’ at the prestigious research meeting organised by the Royal Society titled, ‘Understanding the Neurobiology of Fatigue’. Perception of effort is the conscious sensation of how hard, heavy and strenuous a physical task is. An increase in perception of effort is one of the main features of fatigue in both athletes and patients. Furthermore, the perception of effort is considered an important barrier to physical activity in the general population. With regards to its proximate cause, Professor Marcora will discuss whether the perception of effort is generated by brain processing of multiple afferent sensory signals about the physiological condition of the body, or corollary discharges from premotor and motor areas of the cortex. With regards to its ultimate cause, Professor Marcora will present an alternative to the current proposal that perception of effort is part of a complex system aimed at preventing a catastrophic failure of homoeostasis (eg myocardial ischaemia, rigor mortis in the active muscles, or even death) during excessively intense and/or prolonged physical tasks. Instead, Professor Marcora proposes that perception of effort is part of a complex system aimed at maintaining a relatively high level of body fat which, in turn, has several fitness functions. Finally, he will discuss the translation of this psychobiological research into practical interventions to treat fatigue, improve human performance and reduce physical inactivity in the general population."

 

[adambeyoncelowe]

"The most promising common feature to cognitive science, exercise physiology and clinical practice is the notion of “perceived effort.” "
Double "" doesn't really work does it?

Punctuation aside: Normally if you're using a quote within a quote, you'd use " and ' to differentiate them. So if you normally use double quotation marks ("like this"), the example would be:

"She said 'no'!"

If it's the other way around, it would be:

'She said "no"!'

That way you can avoid "".

In the example above, the UK convention is to punctuate outside the short quote, too. So:

"The most promising common feature to cognitive science, exercise physiology and clinical practice is the notion of 'perceived effort'."

That's because the quoted text doesn't necessarily end with a punctuation mark, so you don't add it in or you'd be changing the quoted text. It also makes things somewhat easier on the eye than .""

ETA: Sorry for the tangent! I find punctuation too much fun, clearly!

 

[MEMarge]

Thanks @adambeyoncelowe.

We now all know who to send any proof-reading to. (My Grandmother always said that a sentence shouldn't end with a preposition. Is that still the case?)

Did you stress these skills to NICE as they may well come in handy with the Guideline process?

 

[adambeyoncelowe]

Thanks @adambeyoncelowe.

We now all know who to send any proof-reading to. (My Grandmother always said that a sentence shouldn't end with a preposition. Is that still the case?)

Did you stress these skills to NICE as they may well come in handy with the Guideline process?

I did. Thank you. I suggested it might make me a good note-taker too.

You're not supposed to end on a preposition, but many people do it. It's not strictly incorrect, but it may look sloppy if you do it all the time. But always avoiding prepositions at the end of a sentence can make your writing seem very formal, too, so it's a trade-off.

Likewise, schools tell us not to start sentences with conjunctions either, but lots of writers do this for various reasons--it can be quite effective.

 

[Keela Too]

I worry about this notion of “perceived fatigue” or “perceived effort” being used anywhere near ME (or any illness actually)!

The body gives sensations of fatigue (and pain too) for good reasons. Something is broken. So the body needs to be protected from doing further damage by over-using the body (or body part) in question. Just because the cause of the fatigue (or pain) is not apparent using current medical knowledge does not mean that the sensation should be discounted, or deemed inappropriate!

This is a worrying notion. Like over-sensitivity, or central sensitisation, it seems to me, it will also lead to more BPS ruminations on how to overcome our inappropriate sensations.

But you all know this already. Meh

Edits for clarity

 

[Mithriel]

The good professor's theory also seems like a way to get obesity as well as fatigue into the grant generating machine. Now we will have all these people who are bankrupting the NHS treated by making them admit their sins.