Age and gender-related differences in fatigue are revealed by a neuroimaging study

Age and gender-related differences in
fatigue are revealed by a neuroimaging study

The authors are from the Kessler Foundation and include Glenn
Wylie, DPhil, Amanda Pra Sisto, Helen M. Genova, Ph.D., and
John DeLuca, Ph.D.
They are all employed as professors at Rutgers New Jersey
Medical School.
Dr. Wylie is a research scientist at the New Jersey Healthcare
System's Department of Veterans Affairs War-related Injury
and Illness Study Center.
Their research is the first to document changes in brain
activation associated to exhaustion across the lifespan and
across gender during a cognitively taxing task, as well as
impacts of gender and age on both "state" and "trait"
weariness.The "state" measure of fatigue evaluates a subject's immediate
level of fatigue at the time of testing, while the "trait" measure
evaluates the level of fatigue a subject experienced over a
longer period of time. such as the past four weeks, or over a
longer period of time.
43 healthy men and women, aged 20 to 63, provided
researchers with data on trait exhaustion and state fatigue.
While participants completed a mentally demanding task
during fMRI scans, state exhaustion was measured.
The Rocco Ortenzio Neuroimaging Center at Kessler
Foundation, a specialist facility devoted only to rehabilitation
research, was where the study was carried out.
They discovered that people over the age of 60 experienced
reduced state tiredness.
The Ortenzio Center's director, Dr. Wylie, stated: "Our
neuroimaging data reveal that the function of middle frontal
areas of the brain alters with age.
Older people do not use these areas in the same ways that
younger people do to fight weariness.Additionally, these outcomes imply that womenBy
demonstrating that state and trait measures of fatigue measure
different aspects of fatigue and that age and gender both
appear to affect the relationship between state fatigue and
brain activation, Dr. Wyle concluded that this study is a crucial
first step toward explaining some of the differences reported in
the literature of fatigue.