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

Marky90

Science breeds knowledge, opinion breeds ignorance
Messages
1,253
But any research designed to show that MECFS is caused by functional abnormalities in the brain is just psychological research in a different guise.

That seems like a generalization.. Not all brain-imaging studies in ME has biased researchers. Not sure if I understood you correctly?
 
Messages
3,263
Not sure if I understood you correctly?
Okay, maybe I should put it the other way around. Psychologists have always been interested in new ways of measuring psychological phenomena. Sure we have always had tried-and-true methods like self-report questionnaires and button press tasks. But these measures have a lot of limitations.

When neuroimaging techniques came about, they thought 'yea" this could be a new tool for measuring psychological processes. Since all thoughts, reactions, attitudes and other cognitive processes must occur as activation patterns in the brain, we should be able to find brain 'signatures' of different psychological processes if we look hard enough.

So psychologists eagerly set about the task of finding neural activity patterns that could be signatures of different types of psychological phenomena.

Enthusiasm was highest in the field of psychopathology. People thought great, if we can find neural signature of depression, or anxiety, or gambling or addiction or somatisation, we have a new way to study these dysfunctional thoughts and behaviours.

Importantly, these researchers did functional neuroimaging. They didn't use neuroimaging to find pathology IN the brain that could explain the psychopathology (amyloid plaques, tau proteins, white matter lesions, shrinkage or whatever), because they didn't think there was any. They considered these disorders to be psychological. They wanted to look at function, to find indices of the disordered thinking/behaviour that led to the problem.

So whenever you see a study that examines functional abnormalities (e.g. abnormal activation patterns) in the brains of a special group - and doesn't seem at all interested in attributing these to a physiological dysfunction or other disease process - then you're talking about a psychological account.
 
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Kalliope

Senior Member
Messages
367
Location
Norway
Adding recent statements from Wyller from a letter-to-the-editor (also discussed in this thread.) This is from a reply to another letter-to-the-editor by prof. Saugstad where Saugstad is calling on people to get updated on research and listen to the ME-patients.

- The fact that the immune system is activated by ME, does not mean that ME is an inflammatory condition. The immune system is also activated by depression, social stress and loneliness - does Saugstad mean that these also are inflammatory conditions?

- The PACE-trial showed that CBT has positive effect on ME-patients. The study is criticised (as with all research) but the main conclusion is not proven wrong.

- Professor Saugstad stages himself as an expert on ME, but has never performed research on ME himself. He is stuck in an old fashioned division between "body" and "soul" and is accompanied by a small but very loud group of ME patients who fights ferociously against "the soul" having anything to do with the matter.

- I ask new patients, carers, health care workers and health politicians; do not listen to this pessimistic, misleading and outdated message. Instead listen to the majority of patients - many have recovered fully! - who makes use of modern and documented treatment methods.
 
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Messages
3,263
- The fact that the immune system is activated by ME, does not mean that ME is an inflammatory condition. The immune system is also activated by depression, social stress and loneliness - does Saugstad mean that these also are inflammatory conditions?
Oh no, not this mess again!

People in the field of depression seem to have gotten themselves in such a paddy about this inflammation thing. It has really upset their applecart. Depression can't be caused by inflammation, oh no! It must be the bad thoughts that cause the inflammation! Ho else can I preserve my firmly held belief that depression is a psychological problem?

My own personal hypothesis is that inflammation causes a set of symptoms that are depression-like, but differ in some core ways from primary depression. We measure depression so loosely, we end up collecting a whole lot of other stuff along with the genuinely depressed folk. I suspect some of the people accidentally "caught-in-the-net" of depression actually have inflammation.

As for the rest, I'll leave that for others to savour!
 

adreno

PR activist
Messages
4,841
Adding recent statements from Wyller from a letter-to-the-editor (also discussed in this thread.) This is from a reply to another letter-to-the-editor by prof. Saugstad where calling on people to get updated on research and listen to the ME-patients.
It should be pretty clear to all skeptics by now that this is really BPS research in disguise.