Information processing in primary fibromyalgia, major depression and healthy controls.

Abstract

To assess the information processing capabilities in 25 patients with primary fibromyalgia (FM) by comparing them with 22 patients with major depression and 18 healthy controls. A broad range of tasks related to various subcomponents of information processing were included. Our results indicated that patients with primary FM in general share with depressives a nonspecific deficit in information processing capacity. However, our data showed that cognitive dysfunction reflecting a presumed compromise of the right hemisphere is present in major depression, but not in primary FM. This finding would suggest that primary FM and depression are probably different conditions.