Using functional connectivity changes associated with cognitive fatigue to delineate a fatigue network, 2020, Wylie et al

[Wyva]

Abstract

Cognitive fatigue, or fatigue related to mental work, is a common experience. A growing body of work using functional neuroimaging has identified several regions that appear to be related to cognitive fatigue and that potentially comprise a “fatigue network”. These include the striatum of the basal ganglia, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), the ventro-medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and the anterior insula. However, no work has been conducted to assess whether the connectivity between these regions changes as a function of cognitive fatigue. We used a task-based functional neuroimaging paradigm to induce fatigue in 39 healthy individuals, regressed the signal associated with the task out of the data, and investigated how the functional connectivity between these regions changed as cognitive fatigue increased. We observed functional connectivity between these regions and other frontal regions largely decreased as cognitive fatigue increased while connectivity between these seeds and more posterior regions increased. Furthermore the striatum, the DLPFC, the insula and the vmPFC appeared to be central ‘nodes’ or hubs of the fatigue network. These findings represent the first demonstration that the functional connectivity between these areas changes as a function of cognitive fatigue.


https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-78768-3

 

[Snowdrop]

Just a few observations / thoughts

I don't know anything about this technology but do wonder if doing this type of examination requires the researcher to make a lot of inference / interpretations of what they see based on some assumptions. If so it would be useful to know that and what they are.

However, no work has been conducted to assess whether the connectivity between these regions changes as a function of cognitive fatigue.

It's unclear to me how much work has been conducted to truly understand how these regions normally function with any degree of detail. Do we know enough about everything these regions do to leap to pronouncements of what changes on an fMRI mean?

 

[Creekside]

Looking for patterns can be a powerful tool ... but it can also lead to silly things such as random patterns of stars in the sky being interpreted as people or animals whose characteristics affect your daily life.

We do need ways to measure fatigue. I think it will require a lot of research projects such as this before we get some reliable means of measuring it.