Abstract #3663

Working Memory Impairment in Fibromyalgia Patients : fMRI Study

Jeehye Seo¹, Jae-Jun Lee¹, Hui-Jin Song¹, Seong-Uk Jin¹, Ji-Young Kim², Yongmin Chang^1,3

¹Medical & Biological Engineering, Kyungpook National University, Daegu, Korea, Republic of; ²School of Medicine, Kyungpook National University, Daegu, Korea, Republic of; ³Diagnostic Radiology, Kyungpook National University , Daegu, Korea, Republic of

Fibromyalgia (FM) is a disorder of uncertain etiology characterized by widespread chronic pain, stiffness, and depression. Patients with FM commonly report cognitive complaints, including memory and attention problems. The aim of this study is to elucidate the differences in neural activation related to working memory between FM patients and healthy subjects. We also investigated differences in deactivation of the default network during performance of working memory between two groups. Nineteen FM patients and 22 healthy subjects performed an n-back memory task. We found that healthy subjects showed better performance in terms of accuracy and reaction times during the task. In between-group analyses, FM patients showed reduced activation in the dorsolateral and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, dorsal cingulate cortex, and inferior parietal cortex. There were no differences in neural deactivation between FM patients and healthy subjects during performance of the n-back test. These results suggest that working memory impairment in FM patients may be attributable to differences in neural activation of the frontoparietal network rather than deactivation of the default network.