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Whence Wyller? CBT/GET Proponent Uncovers Distinct Biological Signature (???)

RogerBlack

Senior Member
Messages
902
I think there are so many other simpler reasons why connectivity patterns may be disrupted in MECFS. The disease affects your cardiovascular system, and this has an enormous influence on how your brain functions, especially prefrontal cortex. That's a much better and simpler explanation for these kinds of abnormalities than the neural-psychological one.

If the metabolic defect is present in most or all cells, and shows to a degree or other, there seems to be little reason it can't cause directly changes in the brain due to normal brain adaption either malfunctioning or attempting to compensate.

If normal neural activity in active brain regions becomes 'tiring' to the cells involved, weird things are pretty much expected.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/london-taxi-memory/ - as one famous study.

The brain is enormously plastic, and changes due to demands placed on it.
If the cells suddenly don't quite function as they did, there is no reason negative, as well as positive adaption might not happen.

Plus, 'negative' adaption might not in fact be negative if you take into account the fact that current understanding of what brain regions 'do' is murky at best.
It could be that the negative adaption seen are in fact because rerouting has been done in other parts of the brain due to the disease affecting some cells more than others.

Needless to say - defects in areas which deal with ... does not mean that you can do ... exercises for that area, or therapy to modulate that effect much, if the biochemical defect remains.
 

lansbergen

Senior Member
Messages
2,512
It could be that the negative adaption seen are in fact because rerouting has been done in other parts of the brain due to the disease affecting some cells more than others.

I think that is happening in ME. Based on what happened during my improvement I think routes are blocked and signals have to take a detour
 

Jenny TipsforME

Senior Member
Messages
1,184
Location
Bristol
basically that the physical symptoms aren't real, and just perceived due to the brain processing problems

And in this case it is very precise because they are highlighting dysfunction in the very area of the brain which would make our perception of our bodies unreliable. I fear I didn't translate this enough in my earlier comments because this is what I was saying.

Even if we accept their premise, what in the world is not physical about the brain? Consciousness is just an extremely complicated chemical/electrical/biological- physical state.

The thing is that BPS folk (officially at least) don't claim it isn't physical (I'd argue that in practice with ME most of them use psychosocial/psychiatrisation not BPS).

Eg they do also think schizophrenia is somewhat physical but that doesn't mean they accept delusions and hallucinations as reflecting a legitimate reality. In this case it could be interpreted as if our symptoms are merely hallucinations of our bodily state due to altered brain function.

So there is physical dysfunction in the brain, but no physical disability.
Yes (according to this theory though I think refuting it should be fairly straightforward eg our blood/muscles would be entirely normal and when people like Ron Davis and Julia Newton do in vitro research we would be no different from controls= not the case)

Physical damage is irrelevant for purposes of obtaining benefits if it's not causing actual physical disability.

This is why it is really key. There would be strong societal pressure to push on through our hallucinations of illness and work regardless. To some extent this already exists but it would have biological backing and they'd say they were taking biomedical research seriously like we asked :rolleyes:
 
Messages
3,263
Plus, 'negative' adaption might not in fact be negative if you take into account the fact that current understanding of what brain regions 'do' is murky at best.
Yes, that's an interesting idea. The brain abnormalities might be compensatory. I think there was a study some time ago of fibromyalgia that supported that idea - it showed that for the same level of externally defined pain, the FM patients actually showed a dampened neural response to the pain (I think it was reduced activation in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex?). That to me suggested that FM patients might have learned to modulate their response to pain in a way that healthies could not.

It doesn't really matter what type of terminology they use - whether psychological, neural or whatever. The real question is, what sort of causal claim are they making? With this study and others like it, it seems to me they are implying that these various brain abnormalities are the root cause of the disease (either in initiating the illness or maintaining it after it begins or both). That they can arise of their own accord if you have right personality and triggering environment factors. That to me is a psychological explanation.
 

Jenny TipsforME

Senior Member
Messages
1,184
Location
Bristol
On that thread I use a comparison with schizophrenia. Most people would accept a physical aspect to schizophrenia but that doesn't mean they accept hallucinations and delusions as an accurate representation of reality.

One way of explaining this type of view of ME is that we experience hallucinations of sickness due to brain dysfunction in the area of the brain which perceives our bodily state. That places ME firmly in the psychiatric camp.

Of course any abnormalities in other areas of the body (not explained by deconditioning) immediately refute this as a causal theory.
 

unto

Senior Member
Messages
171
It's hard to figure out Wyller! He's been a strong proponent of CBT/GET and has reportedly made a lot of problems in Norway but in his last study he actually proposed that Epstein-Barr virus played a role in ME/CFS and urged more research in that area.




I do not think that causing the ME to be EBV but rather an unknown virus;
this virus is always active (such as hepatitis c or AIDS); I believe I have transmitted
the ME to some: family, relatives and friends, even 25 years after the onset in myself;
contagion should occur through body fluids including saliva
 

adreno

PR activist
Messages
4,841
Even if we accept their premise, what in the world is not physical about the brain? Consciousness is just an extremely complicated chemical/electrical/biological- physical state.
Because the study suggests that there is no problems with immune or energy systems – but simply with the wiring of the brain – which can be overcome through CBT. Thus, there is also no need to avoid exercise (or work). If we support this kind of research we are digging our own graves.

ME is very unlikely to be confined to brain connectivity, and very likely to be involving body-wide failure of energy and/or immune systems. This makes brain imaging studies of ME worthless at best, and dangerous at worst.
 
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Solstice

Senior Member
Messages
641
Because the study suggests that there is no problems with immune or energy systems – but simply with the wiring of the brain – which can be overcome through CBT. Thus, there is also no need to avoid exercise (or work). If we support this kind of research we are digging our own graves.

ME is very unlikely to be confined to brain connectivity, and very likely to be involving body-wide failure of energy and/or immune systems. This makes brain imaging studies of ME worthless at best, and dangerous at worst.

Aren't they just making unsupported assumptions too?
 

Marky90

Science breeds knowledge, opinion breeds ignorance
Messages
1,253
ME is very unlikely to be confined to brain connectivity, and very likely to be involving body-wide failure of energy and/or immune systems. This makes brain imaging studies of ME worthless at best, and dangerous at worst.

Well i would say we don`t know that yet, and brain imaging studies do show abnormalities, therefore they are worthwhile in my opinion.
 
Messages
3,263
Well i would say we don`t know that yet, and brain imaging studies do show abnormalities, therefore they are worthwhile in my opinion.
What do people prefer: psychological accounts of ME that are completely up-front in their claim that beliefs, emotions, behaviours play a central causal role in the disease? Or ones where the essentially psychological nature of the account is hidden behind neural terminology?

I prefer the first. You know where you are.

Functional neurological disorders (FNDs) provide a cautionary tale here. In this field, many contemporary accounts are phrased in neural terms. But if you look really carefully at these accounts, they are psychological at their core. To explain why only some people get FNDs, they appeal to personality factors like interoception and anxiety, or even poor coping skills or poor emotional control. But the new accounts are so skillfully phrased, the patients believe they are getting real science ('its not a problem with the hardware, its the software,' and so on).

So no-one objects, and meanwhile, no real research happens that could actually identify the real causes of FNDs.

Brain research is potentially relevant to MECFS because one of the key complaints is cognitive dysfunction. By studying the neural signature of these cognitive difficulties, we might be able to gain insights into new, symptomatic treatments.

But any research designed to show that MECFS is caused by functional abnormalities in the brain is just psychological research in a different guise.
 

user9876

Senior Member
Messages
4,556
What do people prefer: psychological accounts of ME that are completely up-front in their claim that beliefs, emotions, behaviours play a central causal role in the disease? Or ones where the essentially psychological nature of the account is hidden behind neural terminology?

The important thing is clarity. I find both explanations try to hide proposed mechanisms in language I've always thought a bit more formality and simplicity is required including definitions of terms.

('its not a problem with the hardware, its the software,' and so on).
As somebody who understands computers and has read a bit of cognitive science I hate this phrase and think it shows ignorance of both the brain and computers (where does firmware, microcode etc fit)