Schönberg, Laura, Mohamed, Abdalla Z, Yu, Qiang et al. · Journal of cerebral blood flow and metabolism : official journal of the International Society of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism · 2025 · DOI
This study looked at how the brain responds when people with ME/CFS do mental tasks, using brain imaging to measure blood flow. Researchers found that while healthy people's brains become more efficient with repeated effort (showing less activation over time), people with ME/CFS showed the opposite pattern—their brains actually increased activity with each repetition. This suggests that ME/CFS may involve a fundamental difference in how the brain adapts to mental work, potentially explaining why cognitive tasks feel so exhausting.
This is one of the first studies to examine how the ME/CFS brain fails to adapt efficiently during cognitive tasks, providing potential neurobiological evidence for why cognitive exertion worsens fatigue. The findings may help validate ME/CFS as a neurophysiological condition and guide future investigations into energy metabolism and neural efficiency in the disease.
This study does not prove that abnormal BOLD adaptation causes ME/CFS symptoms or that it is specific to ME/CFS—other conditions could show similar patterns. The correlation between motor cortex changes and fatigue severity suggests an association, but does not establish that one causes the other. Results may not generalize to ME/CFS patients with different disease severity levels or comorbidities.
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
Schönberg, Laura, Mohamed, Abdalla Z, Yu, Qiang, Kwiatek, Richard A, Del Fante, Peter, Calhoun, Vince D, et al. (2025). Absence of BOLD adaptation in chronic fatigue syndrome revealed by task functional MRI.. Journal of cerebral blood flow and metabolism : official journal of the International Society of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism. https://doi.org/10.1177/0271678X241270528
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-schnberg-2025-absence-bold,
author = {Schönberg, Laura and Mohamed, Abdalla Z and Yu, Qiang and Kwiatek, Richard A and Del Fante, Peter and Calhoun, Vince D and Shan, Zack Y},
title = {Absence of BOLD adaptation in chronic fatigue syndrome revealed by task functional MRI.},
journal = {Journal of cerebral blood flow and metabolism : official journal of the International Society of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism},
year = {2025},
doi = {10.1177/0271678X241270528},
note = {PubMed: 39113421},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/schnberg-2025-absence-bold},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-30. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/schnberg-2025-absence-bold
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