The Contribution of Motor Commands to the Perturbations Induced by Sensorimotor Conflicts in Fibromyalgia

• Published in: Neuroscience 2020-05, Vol.434, p.55-65
• Main Authors: Brun, Clémentine, McCabe, Candida S., Mercier, Catherine
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: chronic pain; Feedback, Sensory; Fibromyalgia; Humans; Pain; Proprioception; sensorimotor conflict; sensorimotor control; virtual reality
• ISSN: 0306-4522; 1873-7544
• DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroscience.2020.03.017

•Patients with fibromyalgia report higher sensory disturbances than controls when exposed to a visuomotor conflict.•In patients only, performing active movements increases the sensitivity to conflicts compared to passive movements.•A discordance between efferences and vision is thus the key factor explaining greater conflict sensitivity in fibromyalgia. Individuals with pain report higher sensory disturbances during sensorimotor conflicts compared to pain-free individuals. In the pain field, it is frequently assumed that disturbances arise from a discordance between sensory and efference copies (defined as sensory-motor conflict), while in the sensorimotor control field they are considered to result from the incongruence between sensory modalities (defined as sensory-sensory conflict). The general aim of this study was to disentangle the relative contribution of motor efferences and sensory afferences to the increased sensitivity to sensorimotor conflicts in individual with fibromyalgia (n = 20) compared to controls (n = 20). We assessed sensory and motor disturbances during sensory-sensory and sensory-motor conflicts using a robotized exoskeleton interfaced with a 2D virtual environment. There was a significant interaction between the group and the type of conflict (p = 0.03). Moreover, the increase in conflict sensitivity from sensory-sensory to sensory-motor conflicts in fibromyalgia was related to conflict-induced motor disturbances (r = 0.57; p