2006 (with Chalder) study on memory problems in CFS

[Esther12]

The full paper is available here:

http://www.psychosomaticmedicine.org/content/68/6/947.full

Results: Both groups performed comparably well and activated the verbal working memory network during all task levels. However, during the 1-back condition, patients with CFS showed greater activation than control subjects in medial prefrontal regions, including the anterior cingulate gyrus. Conversely, on the more challenging conditions, patients with CFS demonstrated reduced activation in dorsolateral prefrontal and parietal cortices. Furthermore, on the 2- and 3-back conditions, patients but not control subjects significantly activated a large cluster in the right inferior/medial temporal cortex. Trend analyses of task load demonstrated statistically significant differences in brain activation between the two groups as the demands of the task increased.

I'm not that interested in these sorts of studies, but their proposed follow up sounded potentially interesting. As far as I can tell, they haven't followed through with any of the successfully treated patients yet:

Conclusions: These results suggest that patients with CFS show both quantitative and qualitative differences in activation of the working memory network compared with healthy control subjects. It remains to be determined whether these findings stay stable after successful treatment.

We are currently planning to rescan some of the study participants after treatment to examine these alternative hypotheses. Future studies would benefit from carefully recording the patients' sleep patterns and examining whether these correlate with brain activation.

Prior to finding out more about the details of PACE, I was actually supportive of the notion of pooling the funding for CBT/GET studies into one place to do a really thorough study, thinking that they'd actually follow through on this sort of stuff rather than just shamelessly spinning the usual questionnaire scores.