Epigenetic Markers of Aging Predict the Neural Oscillations Serving Selective Attention.
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Wiesman AI
PROVIDER: S-EPMC7132912 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Mar
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Publications
Epigenetic Markers of Aging Predict the Neural Oscillations Serving Selective Attention.
Wiesman Alex I AI Rezich Michael T MT O'Neill Jennifer J Morsey Brenda B Wang Tina T Ideker Trey T Swindells Susan S Fox Howard S HS Wilson Tony W TW
Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) 20200301 3
Chronological age remains an imperfect measure of accumulated physiological stress. Biological measures of aging may provide key advantages, allowing scientists focusing on age-related functional changes to use metrics derived from epigenetic factors like DNA methylation (DNAm), which could provide greater precision. Here we investigated the relationship between methylation-based age and an essential cognitive function that is known to exhibit age-related decline: selective attention. We found t ...[more]
Similar Datasets
Project description:The dynamic allocation of neural resources to discrete features within a visual scene enables us to react quickly and accurately to salient environmental circumstances. A network of bilateral cortical regions is known to subserve such visuospatial attention functions; however the oscillatory and functional connectivity dynamics of information coding within this network are not fully understood. Particularly, the coding of information within prototypical attention-network hubs and the subsecond functional connections formed between these hubs have not been adequately characterized. Herein, we use the precise temporal resolution of magnetoencephalography (MEG) to define spectrally specific functional nodes and connections that underlie the deployment of attention in visual space. Twenty-three healthy young adults completed a visuospatial discrimination task designed to elicit multispectral activity in visual cortex during MEG, and the resulting data were preprocessed and reconstructed in the time-frequency domain. Oscillatory responses were projected to the cortical surface using a beamformer, and time series were extracted from peak voxels to examine their temporal evolution. Dynamic functional connectivity was then computed between nodes within each frequency band of interest. We find that visual attention network nodes are defined functionally by oscillatory frequency, that the allocation of attention to the visual space dynamically modulates functional connectivity between these regions on a millisecond timescale, and that these modulations significantly correlate with performance on a spatial discrimination task. We conclude that functional hubs underlying visuospatial attention are segregated not only anatomically but also by oscillatory frequency, and importantly that these oscillatory signatures promote dynamic communication between these hubs. Hum Brain Mapp 38:5128-5140, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
| S-EPMC5593769 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundDespite effective antiretroviral therapy, cognitive impairment and other aging-related comorbidities are more prevalent in people with HIV (PWH) than in the general population. Previous research examining DNA methylation has shown PWH exhibit accelerated biological aging. However, it is unclear how accelerated biological aging may affect neural oscillatory activity in virally suppressed PWH, and more broadly how such aberrant neural activity may impact neuropsychological performance.MethodsIn the present study, participants (n = 134) between the ages of 23 - 72 years underwent a neuropsychological assessment, a blood draw to determine biological age via DNA methylation, and a visuospatial processing task during magnetoencephalography (MEG). Our analyses focused on the relationship between biological age and oscillatory theta (4-8 Hz) and alpha (10 - 16 Hz) activity among PWH (n=65) and seronegative controls (n = 69).ResultsPWH had significantly elevated biological age when controlling for chronological age relative to controls. Biological age was differentially associated with theta oscillations in the left posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) and with alpha oscillations in the right medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) among PWH and seronegative controls. Stronger alpha oscillations in the mPFC were associated with lower CD4 nadir and lower current CD4 counts, suggesting such responses were compensatory. Participants who were on combination antiretroviral therapy for longer had weaker theta oscillations in the PCC.ConclusionsThese findings support the concept of interactions between biological aging and HIV status on the neural oscillatory dynamics serving visuospatial processing. Future work should elucidate the long-term trajectory and impact of accelerated aging on neural oscillatory dynamics in PWH.
| S-EPMC9831734 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Working memory (WM) is essential for normal cognitive function, but shows marked decline in aging. The importance of selective attention in guiding WM performance is increasingly recognized. Studies so far are inconclusive about the ability to use selective attention during WM in aging. To investigate the neural mechanisms supporting selective attention in WM in aging, we tested a large group of older adults using functional magnetic resonance imaging whilst they performed a category-based (faces/houses) selective-WM task. Older adults were able to use attention to encode targets and suppress distractors to reach high levels of task performance. A subsequent, surprise recognition-memory task showed strong consequences of selective attention. Attended items in the relevant category were recognized significantly better than items in the ignored category. Neural measures also showed reliable markers of selective attention during WM. Purported control regions including the dorsolateral and inferior prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortex were reliably recruited for attention to both categories. Activation levels in category-sensitive visual cortex showed reliable modulation according to attentional demands, and positively correlated with subsequent memory measures of attention and WM span. Psychophysiological interaction analyses showed that activity in category-sensitive areas were coupled with non-sensory cortex known to be involved in cognitive control and memory processing, including regions in the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus. In summary, we found that older adults were able to recruit a network of brain regions involved in top-down attention during selective WM, and individual differences in attentional control corresponded to the degree of attention-related modulation in the brain.
| S-EPMC6547047 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Abstract Selective attention is an important component of cognitive control and is essential for day-to-day functioning. The Simon task is a common test of visual selective attention that has been widely used to probe response selection, inhibition and cognitive control. However, to date, there is a dearth of literature that has focused on the oscillatory dynamics serving task performance in the selective attention component of this task. In this study, 32 healthy adults (mean age: 33.09 years, SD: 7.27 years) successfully completed a modified version of the Simon task during magnetoencephalography. All magnetoencephalographic data were pre-processed and transformed into the time–frequency domain. Significant oscillatory brain responses were imaged using a beamforming approach, and peak task-related neural activity was extracted to examine the temporal dynamics. Across both congruent and Simon conditions, our results indicated robust decreases in alpha (8–12 Hz) activity in the bilateral occipital regions and cuneus during task performance, while increases in theta (3–6 Hz) oscillatory activity were detected in regions of the dorsal frontoparietal attention network, including the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, frontal eye fields and insula. Lastly, whole-brain condition-wise analyses showed Simon interference effects in the theta range in the superior parietal region and the alpha range in the posterior cingulate and inferior frontal cortices. These findings provide network-specific insights into the oscillatory dynamics serving visual selective attention. Using magnetoencephalography and a modified Simon task to investigate the neural oscillatory dynamics serving selective attention, Son et al. report decreases in alpha (8–12 Hz) activity in primary visual regions and increases in theta (3–6 Hz) activity in regions of the dorsal frontoparietal attention network. Graphical Abstract Graphical Abstract
| S-EPMC10162684 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Age-related deficits in selective attention have been demonstrated to depend on the sensory modality through which targets and distractors are presented. Some of these investigations suggest a specific impairment of cross-modal auditory selective attention. For the first time, this study is taking on a whole brain approach while including a passive perception baseline, to investigate the neural underpinnings of selective attention across age groups, and taking the sensory modality of relevant and irrelevant (i.e., distracting) stimuli into account. Sixteen younger (mean age = 23.3 years) and 14 older (mean age = 65.3 years), healthy participants performed a series of delayed match-to-sample tasks, in which participants had to selectively attend to visual stimuli, selectively attend to auditory stimuli, or passively view and hear both types of stimuli, while undergoing 3T fMRI. The imaging analyses showed that areas recruited by cross-modal visual and auditory selective attention in both age groups included parts of the dorsal attention and frontoparietal control networks (i.e., intraparietal sulcus, insula, fusiform gyrus, anterior cingulate, and inferior frontal cortex). Most importantly, activation throughout the brain did not differ across age groups, suggesting intact brain function during cross-modal selective attention in older adults. Moreover, stronger brain activation during cross-modal visual vs. cross-modal auditory selective attention was found in both age groups, which is consistent with earlier accounts of visual dominance. In conclusion, these results do not support the hypothesized age-related deficit of cross-modal auditory selective attention. Instead, they suggest that the underlying neural correlates of cross-modal selective attention are similar in younger and older adults.
| S-EPMC7693624 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Aberrant attentional biases to social stimuli have been implicated in a number of disorders including autism and social anxiety disorder. Oxytocin, a naturally-occurring mammalian hormone and neuromodulator involved in regulating social behavior, has been proposed to impact basic biological systems that facilitate the detection of and orientation to social information. Here, we investigate a role for naturally-occurring variability in the endogenous oxytocinergic system in regulating neural response during attention to social information. Participants performed a selective social attention task while undergoing fMRI, provided a blood sample for epigenetic analysis, and completed self-report measures of social functioning. We find that a functional epigenetic modification to the oxytocin receptor, OXTR methylation, is associated with increased neural response within and decreased functional coupling between regions of the salience and attentional control networks during selective social attention. We also show that subclinical variability in autistic and social anxiety traits moderates this epigenetic regulation of neural response. These data offer a mechanistic explanation to a growing literature associating social behavior and disorder with epigenetic modification to OXTR by suggesting that OXTR methylation reflects a decrease in the extent to which social information automatically captures attention. We highlight the importance that treatment efficacy be considered in relation to individual differences in molecular makeup, and that future studies aimed at uncovering biomarkers of disorder carefully consider measurement at both the biological and phenotypic level.
| S-EPMC6003910 | biostudies-literature
Project description:IntroductionInflammatory processes help protect the body from potential threats such as bacterial or viral invasions. However, when such inflammatory processes become chronically engaged, synaptic impairments and neuronal cell death may occur. In particular, persistently high levels of C-reactive protein (CRP) and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) have been linked to deficits in cognition and several psychiatric disorders. Higher-order cognitive processes such as fluid intelligence (Gf) are thought to be particularly vulnerable to persistent inflammation. Herein, we investigated the relationship between elevated CRP and TNF-α and the neural oscillatory dynamics serving Gf.MethodsSeventy adults between the ages of 20-66 years (Mean = 45.17 years, SD = 16.29, 21.4% female) completed an abstract reasoning task that probes Gf during magnetoencephalography (MEG) and provided a blood sample for inflammatory marker analysis. MEG data were imaged in the time-frequency domain, and whole-brain regressions were conducted using each individual's plasma CRP and TNF-α concentrations per oscillatory response, controlling for age, BMI, and education.ResultsCRP and TNF-α levels were significantly associated with region-specific neural oscillatory responses. In particular, elevated CRP concentrations were associated with altered gamma activity in the right inferior frontal gyrus and right cerebellum. In contrast, elevated TNF-α levels scaled with alpha/beta oscillations in the left anterior cingulate and left middle temporal, and gamma activity in the left intraparietal sulcus.DiscussionElevated inflammatory markers such as CRP and TNF-α were associated with aberrant neural oscillations in regions important for Gf. Linking inflammatory markers with regional neural oscillations may hold promise in identifying mechanisms of cognitive and psychiatric disorders.
| S-EPMC10591904 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Numerous clinical reports have suggested that psychopathy like schizophrenia, anxiety and depression is accompanied by early attentional abnormalities in emotional processing. Recently, the efficacy of transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) in changing emotional functioning has been repeatedly observed and demonstrated a causal relationship between endogenous oscillations and emotional processing. Up to now, tACS effects on emotional attention have not yet been tested. To assess such ability, we delivered active-tACS at individual alpha frequency (IAF), 10 Hz or sham-tACS for 7 consecutive days in the bilaterally dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) to totally 79 healthy participants. IAF-tACS group showed significant alpha entrainment at-rest, especially in open state around stimulation area and showed an obvious advantage compared to 10 Hz-tACS. Event-related potential revealed a significant larger P200 amplitude after active-tACS and IAF group showed wider range of emotions than 10 Hz-tACS, indicating the attentional improvement in facial emotion processing. A notable positive correlation between alpha power and P200 amplitude provided an electrophysiological interpretation regarding the role of tACS in emotional attention modulation instead of somatosensory effects. These results support a seminal outcome for the effect of IAF-tACS on emotional attention modulation, demonstrating a feasible and individual-specific therapy for neuropsychiatric disorders related to emotion processing, especially regarding oscillatory disturbances.
| S-EPMC10640550 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The legalization of recreational cannabis use has expanded the availability of this psychoactive substance in the United States. Research has shown that chronic cannabis use is associated with altered working memory function, however, the brain areas and neural dynamics underlying these affects remain poorly understood. In this study, we leveraged magnetoencephalography (MEG) to investigate neurophysiological activity in 45 participants (22 heavy cannabis users) during a numerical WM task, whereby participants were asked to either maintain or manipulate (i.e., rearrange in ascending order) a group of visually presented numbers. Significant oscillatory responses were imaged using a beamformer and subjected to whole-brain ANOVAs. Notably, we found that cannabis users exhibited significantly weaker alpha oscillations in superior parietal, occipital, and other regions during the encoding phase relative to nonusers. Interestingly, during the maintenance phase, there was a group-by-condition interaction in the right inferior frontal gyrus, left prefrontal, parietal, and other regions, such that cannabis users exhibited weaker alpha and beta oscillations relative to nonusers during maintain trials. Additionally, chronic cannabis users exhibited stronger alpha and beta maintenance responses in these same brain regions and prolonged reaction times during manipulate relative to maintain trials, while no such differences were found in nonusers. Neurobehavioral relationships were also detected in the prefrontal cortices of nonusers, but not cannabis users. In sum, chronic cannabis users exhibit weaker neural oscillations during working memory encoding but may compensate for these deficiencies through stronger oscillatory responses during memory maintenance, especially during strenuous tasks such as manipulating the to-be remembered items.
| S-EPMC11798582 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Emerging evidence has suggested that the tendency for older adults to bind too much contextual information during encoding (i.e., hyper-binding) may contribute to poorer memory for relevant contextual information during retrieval. While these findings are consistent with theories of age-related declines in selective attention and inhibitory control, the degree to which older adults are able to selectively attend to relevant contextual information during encoding is unknown. To better understand the neural dynamics associated with selective attention during encoding, the current study applied multivariate pattern analyses (MVPA) to oscillatory EEG in order to track moment-to-moment shifts of attention between relevant and irrelevant contextual information during encoding. Young and older adults studied pictures of objects in the presence of two contextual features: a color and a scene, and their attention was directed to the object's relationship with one of those contexts (i.e., target context). Results showed that patterns of oscillatory power successfully predicted whether selective attention was directed to a scene or color, across age groups. Individual differences in overall classification performance were associated with individual differences in target context memory accuracy during retrieval. However, changes in classification performance within a trial, suggestive of fluctuations in selective attention, predicted individual differences in hyper-binding. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to use MPVA techniques to decode attention during episodic encoding and the impact of attentional shifts toward distracting information on age-related context memory impairments and hyper-binding. These results are consistent with the as-of-yet unsubstantiated theory that age-related declines in context memory may be attributable to poorer selective attention and/or greater inhibitory deficits in older adults.
| S-EPMC6468982 | biostudies-literature