Exploring the relationship between effort perception and poststroke fatigue
William De Doncker, Lucie Charles, Sasha Ondobaka, Annapoorna Kuppuswamy
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: To test the hypothesis that poststroke fatigue, a chronic, pathologic fatigue condition, is driven by altered effort perception. METHODS: Fifty-eight nondepressed, mildly impaired stroke survivors with varying severity of fatigue completed the study. Self-reported fatigue (trait and state), perceived effort (PE; explicit and implicit), and motor performance were measured in a handgrip task. Trait fatigue was measured with the Fatigue Severity Scale-7 and Neurologic Fatigue Index. State fatigue was measured with a visual analog scale (VAS). Length of hold at target force, overshoot above target force, and force variability in handgrip task were measures of motor performance. PE was measured with a VAS (explicit PE) and line length estimation, a novel implicit measure of PE. RESULTS: = 0.017). None of the correlations were significant for state fatigue. CONCLUSION: Trait fatigue, but not state fatigue, correlating with measures of PE and motor performance, may suggest that altered perception may lead to high fatigue mediated by changes in motor performance. This finding furthers our mechanistic understanding of poststroke fatigue.