Cognitive fatigue that occurs after traumatic brain injury is due to caudate nucleus and clinical interventions targeting the caudate nucleus can help ease fatigue.
‘Individuals experience cognitive fatigue due to the activation changes that occur in the caudate nucleus of the basal ganglia.’
The authors are Glenn Wylie, DPhil, Ekaterina Dobryakova, PhD, John DeLuca, PhD, Nancy Chiaravalloti, PhD, of Kessler Foundation, and K. Essad of Dartmouth College Medical School. Individuals with neurological damage often report difficulties with cognitive fatigue, a subjective lack of mental energy that is perceived to interfere with daily activities. Because of poor correlation between self-reports of cognitive fatigue and tests of cognitive performance, scientists are looking at more objective measures, such as correlations with neuroimaging findings.
In the Kessler study, brain activation patterns were compared in 22 individuals with moderate to severe TBI and 20 healthy controls. Both groups performed tasks of working memory during functional MRI imaging of the brain; the TBI group reported more fatigue, although performance was comparable between the groups.
New Study Sheds Light on Mechanisms of Cognitive Fatigue in Multiple Sclerosis
New study conducted by Kessler Foundation scientists sheds light on the mechanisms underlying cognitive fatigue in multiple sclerosis patients.
New study conducted by Kessler Foundation scientists sheds light on the mechanisms underlying cognitive fatigue in multiple sclerosis patients.
"These results are consistent with findings in our related research in the multiple sclerosis (MS) population," said Dr. Wylie, the lead author, "which suggests that the TBI and MS populations share a mechanism for cognitive fatigue." This has important implications for the development of effective treatments.
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