Alexiane De Munter (PhD student; FNRS WelChange)
Fibromyalgia is a chronic pain syndrome characterized by diffuse pain and often associated with sleep, mood and cognitive disorders. Patients’ difficulties in managing cognitive effort and distractibility during daily cognitive activities are recognized as cognitive markers of fibromyalgia. These difficulties could be explained either by the fact that their physical symptoms capture their cognitive resources, or by cognitive biases that motivate them to give priority attention to their bodily sensations to the detriment of other information from their environment. However, no study has yet managed to clearly define the cognitive dysfunctions underlying their difficulties. One of the issues raised is that these previous studies have used tools that are poorly suited to assess cognitive function of chronic pain people and with stimuli that are not very relevant to them, such as neutral visual stimuli. The objective of the project is to test in patients with fibromyalgia their abilities to perceive their body and its peripersonal space, as well as their abilities to pay attention and to memorize somatosensory stimuli directly applied to their body (particularly during conflict with non-somatic stimuli).
Group members