Key result
Post-stroke fatigue is linked to sustained effort vulnerability and failure to increase speed over time.
Why the study?
Post-stroke fatigue is prevalent and associated with cognitive difficulties, but its mechanisms are poorly understood and studies identifying cognitive correlates have been largely inconclusive.
Does post-stroke fatigue correlate with specific attentional function deficits in stroke patients?
Observational (n=53)
Does post-stroke fatigue correlate with specific attentional function deficits in stroke patients?
Post-stroke fatigue is associated with an increased vulnerability to sustained effort, specifically affecting stimulus encoding and response execution rather than cognitive information processing.
Post-stroke fatigue may flag attentional vulnerabilities in sustained effort; leaves open causal mechanisms and intervention targets.
Post-stroke fatigue (PSF) is prevalent among stroke patients, but its mechanisms are poorly understood. Many patients with PSF experience cognitive difficulties, but studies aiming to identify cognitive correlates of PSF have been largely inconclusive. With the aim of characterizing the relationship between subjective fatigue and attentional function, we collected behavioral data using the attention network test (ANT) and self-reported fatigue scores using the fatigue severity scale (FSS) from 53 stroke patients. In order to evaluate the utility and added value of computational modeling for delineating specific underpinnings of response time (RT) distributions, we fitted a hierarchical drift diffusion model (hDDM) to the ANT data. Results revealed a relationship between fatigue and RT distributions. Specifically, there was a positive interaction between FSS score and elapsed time on RT. Group analyses suggested that patients without PSF increased speed during the course of the session, while patients with PSF did not. In line with the conventional analyses based on observed RT, the best fitting hDD model identified an interaction between elapsed time and fatigue on non-decision time, suggesting an increase in time needed for stimulus encoding and response execution rather than cognitive information processing and evidence accumulation. These novel results demonstrate the significance of considering the sustained nature of effort when defining the cognitive phenotype of PSF, intuitively indicating that the cognitive phenotype of fatigue entails an increased vulnerability to sustained effort, and suggest that the use of computational approaches offers a further characterization of specific processes underlying behavioral differences.
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Ulrichsen et al. (2020) conducted an observational in Post-stroke fatigue (n=53). Attention network test and fatigue severity scale vs. Patients without post-stroke fatigue was evaluated on Relationship between subjective fatigue and attentional function (response time distributions). Post-stroke fatigue was associated with an increased vulnerability to sustained effort, as patients with fatigue failed to increase speed over time compared to those without fatigue.
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