EEG source analysis of chronic fatigue syndrome. Psychiatry Research Flor-Henry, P., Lind, J. C., and Koles, Z. J. Abstract Sixty-one dextral, unmedicated women with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) diagnosed according to the Fukuda criteria (1994) and referred for investigation by rheumatologists and internists were studied with quantitative EEG (43 channels) at rest with eyes open and during verbal and spatial cognitive activation. The EEGs from the patients were compared with recordings from 80 dextral healthy female controls. Only those subjects who could provide 20 1-s artefact-free segments of EEG were admitted into the study. The analysis consisted of the identification of the spatial patterns in the EEGs that maximally differentiated the two groups and the estimation of the cortical source distributions underlying these patterns. Spatial patterns were analyzed in the alpha (8–13 Hz) and beta (14–20 Hz) bands and the source distributions were estimated using the Borgiotti–Kaplan BEAMFORMER algorithm. The results indicate that the spatial patterns identified were effective in separating the two groups, providing a minimum correct retrospective classification rate of 72% in both frequency bands while the subjects were at rest to a maximum of 83% in the alpha band during the verbal cognitive condition. Underlying cortical source distributions showed significant differences between the two groups in both frequency bands and in all cognitive conditions. Lateralized cortical differences were evident between the two groups in the both frequency bands during both the verbal and spatial cognitive conditions. During these active cognitive conditions, the CFS group showed significantly greater source-current activity than the controls in the left frontal–temporal–parietal regions of the cortex. (split text for ease of reading) https://sci-hub.se/10.1016/j.pscychresns.2009.10.007
Although published as psychiatry paper, this does seem to be pathophysiologically based. 5. Conclusion Thus, it would appear that dysregulation of the cortical hemispheric controls of immunological functional systems (left hemisphere) and hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenocortical axis is the underlying patho-physiology of CFS. The best discrimination from controls is during cognitive activation of the left hemisphere during the Word Finding task, over 80% correct (8–13 Hz). At the same time cognitive activation of the right hemisphere in the spatial task, presumably through transcallosal interaction, also induces increased sources in the left a promising diagnostic indicator for this disorder.
Hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenocortical axis dysfunction was thought to be part of ME before CFS. The past is littered with papers like this; suggestive findings which were never followed up to be confirmed or discarded, simply ignored because they do not fit with deconditioning and kinesophobia.
