Working memory in people with somatic hypervigilance

What is it about?

We matched 173 people who report more and more intense bodily sensation than usual (somatic hypervigilance) with healthy controls on age, gender, handedness and education level. We used electrical signals from the brain to evaluate brain activity as they performed working memory tasks. We found that people with somatic hypervigilance demonstrated altered information processing.

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Why is it important?

This study is important because on the strength of a relatively homogenous sample 4.3 X larger than any previous, it suggests that somatic hypervigilance, a characteristic common to many other conditions such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Chronic Pain and Fibromyalgia, is associated with altered information processing. This association is not due to age, gender, handedness, education level, level of depression or anxiety. Although as yet the clinical applicability of this finding is limited by what we don't know about the processes that underpin these changes, on the strength of the findings, one might contend that the assessment and restorative intervention of working memory in conditions such as the above is worth considering. The establishment of clinically relevant, standardised evidence based testing and intervention protocols for working memory would facilitate progress in this direction.