Fatigue is a common symptom associated with many medical conditions like obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA), rheumatoid arthritis (RA), and COVID 19, i.e., long COVID. Fatigue manifests itself in the form of exhaustion and tiredness. Indeed, fatigue has a profound impact on sufferers’ quality of life, while treatment schemes are limited and focusing mainly on graded exercise training (GET). Exercise treatment, however, does not recognize potential problems with effort-reward imbalance in fatigue patients affecting motivation for investing effort in tasks. Recently, we have investigated the influence of evaluative conditioning using a novel technique on self-selected exercise intensity and effort sensation in healthy sedentary individuals (Kubis et al. 2021; https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0257953). Outcomes show that individuals self-select exercise intensity significantly higher than control individuals after the conditioning training even weeks after the training. Analyses revealed that the intensity of exercise selected was a function of integrated reward over effort costs. This opens the opportunity to use this type of training for patients with fatigue conditions, conditioned reward (based on our Oro-sensory exercise training) would potentially enable patients to improve their effort-reward imbalance enabling them to increase the intensity of daily activities and reduce fatigue symptoms. Conclusively, our grant application uses funds for bespoke equipment and testing of portable systems which can be used in exercise rehabilitation settings as well as for developing/writing a grant application for a proof of concept / feasibility trial.

Funding awarded through the Bangor University Innovation and Impact Award (Research Wales Innovation Funding). Value = £6947