Matsuoka Takahiro, Shimode Takaki, Ota Toshio, Matsuo Koji
Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, Saitama Medical University, Saitama, Japan.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2021 Jan 25;14:570279. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2020.570279. eCollection 2020.
Dysfunctional attentional control is observed in patients with mental disorders. However, there is no established neurophysiological method to assess attention in such patients. We showed a discrepancy in alpha-band power in the tasks that evoked internal and external attention event-related alpha-band power changes in healthy subjects during self-reflection (SR) and working memory (WM) tasks in a preliminary study. In this study, we aimed at elucidating event-related alpha-band power changes in healthy subjects during the tasks, addressing the shortcomings of the previous study. Sixteen healthy volunteers were examined for the event-related power (ERpow) change during the tasks. The results demonstrated the discrepancy of alpha-band ERpow at 8, 10, and 12 Hz in the parieto-occipital area between the WM and SR tasks for a period between a target stimulus and a command stimulus, where a participant switched to internal attention from external attention according to the SR task and remained at external attention according to the WM task. The results suggest that alpha-band ERpow in this area is associated with the direction of attention in response to cognitive stimuli, indicating that the findings of ERpow during the two tasks would potentially aid in the clarification of the pathophysiology of the dysfunctional change in attention in patients with psychiatric disorders.
在精神障碍患者中观察到注意力控制功能失调。然而，目前尚无既定的神经生理学方法来评估此类患者的注意力。在一项初步研究中，我们发现，在自我反思（SR）和工作记忆（WM）任务期间，诱发健康受试者内部和外部注意力事件相关α波段功率变化的任务中，α波段功率存在差异。在本研究中，我们旨在阐明健康受试者在任务期间与事件相关的α波段功率变化，解决先前研究的不足之处。对16名健康志愿者在任务期间的事件相关功率（ERpow）变化进行了检测。结果表明，在目标刺激和指令刺激之间的一段时间内，WM任务和SR任务在顶枕区8、10和12Hz处的α波段ERpow存在差异，在SR任务中，参与者根据任务从外部注意力切换到内部注意力，而在WM任务中则保持外部注意力。结果表明，该区域的α波段ERpow与对认知刺激的注意力方向有关，这表明两项任务期间的ERpow结果可能有助于阐明精神疾病患者注意力功能失调变化的病理生理学。
