Barnden, Leighton, Crouch, Benjamin, Kwiatek, Richard et al. · Brain sciences · 2022 · DOI
This study looked at brain scans from people with ME/CFS and healthy people to understand how the brain protects and maintains nerve fibers (myelin). Researchers found that healthy people show a balancing pattern: when one part of the brain has less myelin coverage, another part compensates by having more. The study suggests this balance may be disrupted in ME/CFS, which could contribute to symptom severity.
Understanding how the brain regulates myelin in healthy people provides a benchmark for identifying where this regulation fails in ME/CFS, potentially explaining motor control symptoms and post-exertional malaise. If ME/CFS patients show disrupted myelin compensation patterns, this could guide development of therapeutic interventions targeting myelination and neurological regulation.
This study demonstrates correlation, not causation—the anti-correlation pattern in healthy controls does not prove that one region actively regulates the other or that disruption of this pattern causes ME/CFS symptoms. The cross-sectional design cannot determine whether altered myelination patterns are a cause or consequence of ME/CFS, nor does the abstract clarify whether ME/CFS patients actually show disrupted anti-correlations compared to controls.
About the PEM badge: “PEM required” means post-exertional malaise was an explicit required diagnostic criterion for participant inclusion in this study — not that PEM was studied, observed, or discussed. Studies using criteria that do not require PEM (e.g. Fukuda, Oxford) are tagged “PEM not required”. How the atlas works →
The first block is for the primary paper and is the citation you should use in research work. The atlas-snapshot line only applies if you are specifically referring to this atlas’s reading of the paper on the date shown.
Primary citation
Barnden, Leighton, Crouch, Benjamin, Kwiatek, Richard, Shan, Zack, Thapaliya, Kiran, Staines, Donald, et al. (2022). Anti-Correlated Myelin-Sensitive MRI Levels in Humans Consistent with a Subcortical to Sensorimotor Regulatory Process-Multi-Cohort Multi-Modal Evidence.. Brain sciences. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci12121693
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-barnden-2022-anti-correlated,
author = {Barnden, Leighton and Crouch, Benjamin and Kwiatek, Richard and Shan, Zack and Thapaliya, Kiran and Staines, Donald and Bhuta, Sandeep and Del Fante, Peter and Burnet, Richard},
title = {Anti-Correlated Myelin-Sensitive MRI Levels in Humans Consistent with a Subcortical to Sensorimotor Regulatory Process-Multi-Cohort Multi-Modal Evidence.},
journal = {Brain sciences},
year = {2022},
doi = {10.3390/brainsci12121693},
note = {PubMed: 36552153},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/barnden-2022-anti-correlated},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-28. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/barnden-2022-anti-correlated
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