Cognitive-emotional therapeutic approach to fibromyalgia treatment under the spotlight in new research

The importance of cognitive-emotional therapeutic approaches for the treatment of fibromyalgia has been highlighted in a small study in the Journal of Pain.
We already know that people with fibromyalgia have increased sensitivity to experimental pain and pain-related cues. So experts looked at the patterns of brain activity for observed pain in 19 people with fibromyalgia and compared them to 18 healthy people of the same age.
They found that people with fibromyalgia attributed greater pain and unpleasantness to pain pictures than the healthy people did. In fact, they demonstrated increased activations for pain and non-pain pictures.
“The fibromyalgia group tended to demonstrate increased mid-long latency event-related potential components in response to both pain and non-pain pictures,” the researchers highlight. “The findings suggest that innocuous, everyday somatic visual stimuli may challenge the emotional state of fibromyalgia patients.”

Click here to read the original research.

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Image credit: Pedro Moura Pinheiro