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Research Paper|Volume 15, Issue 2|pp 524—541

Oscillatory markers of neuroHIV-related cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease during attentional interference processing

Chloe E. Meehan1,2, Mikki Schantell1,3, Alex I. Wiesman4, Sara L. Wolfson5, Jennifer O’Neill6, Sara H. Bares6, Craig M. Johnson7, Pamela E. May8, Daniel L. Murman8,9, Tony W. Wilson1,2,3,10
  • 1Institute for Human Neuroscience, Boys Town National Research Hospital, Boys Town, NE 68010, USA
  • 2Department of Psychology, University of Nebraska – Omaha, Omaha, NE 68182, USA
  • 3College of Medicine, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, NE 68198, USA
  • 4Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 2B4, CA
  • 5Geriatrics Medicine Clinic, UNMC, Omaha, NE 68198, USA
  • 6Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases, UNMC, Omaha, NE 68198, USA
  • 7Department of Radiology, UNMC, Omaha, NE 68198, USA
  • 8Department of Neurological Sciences, UNMC, Omaha, NE 68198, USA
  • 9Memory Disorders and Behavioral Neurology Program, UNMC, Omaha, NE 68198, USA
  • 10Department of Pharmacology and Neuroscience, Creighton University, Omaha, NE 68178, USA
Received: July 28, 2022Accepted: January 3, 2023Published: January 19, 2023
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.204496

Copyright: © 2023 Meehan et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

People with HIV (PWH) frequently experience mild cognitive decline, which is typically attributed to HIV-associated neurocognitive disorder (HAND). However, such declines could also be a sign of early Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in older PWH. Distinguishing these two pathologies in PWH is exceedingly difficult, as there is a major knowledge gap regarding their neural and neuropsychological bases. In the current study, we begin to address this knowledge gap by recording magnetoencephalography (MEG) during a flanker interference task in 31 biomarker-confirmed patients on the AD spectrum (ADS), 25 older participants with HAND, and 31 cognitively-normal controls. MEG data was examined in the time-frequency domain using a data-driven approach. Our results indicated that the clinical groups (ADS/HAND) performed significantly worse than controls on the task and exhibited aberrations in interference-related theta and alpha oscillations, some of which were disease-specific. Specifically, patients (ADS/HAND) exhibited weaker interference activity in frontoparietal and cingulate cortices compared to controls, while the ADS group exhibited stronger theta interference than those with HAND in frontoparietal, occipital, and temporal cortices. These results reveal overlapping and distinct patterns of neurophysiological alterations among those with ADS and HAND in attentional processing centers and suggest the existence of unique oscillatory markers of each condition.