Department of Psychology, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.
Department of Psychology, Durham University, Durham, UK.
BMC Psychol. 2021 May 5;9(1):72. doi: 10.1186/s40359-021-00575-w.
Williams syndrome (WS) is neurodevelopmental disorder characterised by executive deficits of attention and inhibitory processing. The current study examined the neural mechanisms during resting states in adults with WS in order to investigate how this subserves the attention and inhibitory deficits associated with the syndrome.
Adopting electroencephalography (EEG) methodology, cortical electrical activity was recorded from eleven adults with WS aged 35 + years during Eyes Closed (EC) and Eyes Open (EO) resting states, and compared to that of thirteen typically developing adults matched for chronological age (CA) and ten typically developing children matched for verbal mental ability (MA). Using mixed-design analyses of variance (ANOVA), analyses focused on the full alpha (8-12.5 Hz), low-alpha (8-10 Hz), upper-alpha (10-12.5 Hz), and beta (13-29.5 Hz) bands, as these are thought to have functional significance with attentional and inhibitory processes.
No significant difference in alpha power were found between the WS and CA groups across all analyses, however a trend for numerically lower alpha power was observed in the WS group, consistent with other developmental disorders characterised by attentional/inhibitory deficits such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). In contrast, comparable beta power between the WS and CA groups during both EC/EO conditions suggests that their baseline EEG signature is commensurate with successful attentional processing, though this needs to be interpreted with caution due to the small sample size. Analyses also revealed an unusual trend for low variability in the EEG signature of the WS group, which contradicts the heterogeneity typically observed behaviourally.
This novel finding of low variability in the EEG spectra in the WS group has been previously associated with poor behavioural performance in ADHD and is highly informative, highlighting future research needs to also consider how the role of low variability in the EEG profile of WS manifests in relation to their behavioural and cognitive profiles.
威廉姆斯综合征（WS）是一种神经发育障碍，其特征是注意力和抑制加工的执行功能缺陷。本研究旨在通过静息态脑电图（EEG）研究，探究 WS 成人在静息状态下的神经机制，以研究其如何与该综合征相关的注意力和抑制缺陷相关。
采用脑电图（EEG）方法，记录了 11 名年龄在 35 岁以上的 WS 成人在闭眼（EC）和睁眼（EO）静息状态下的皮质电活动，并与 13 名年龄匹配的正常发育成人（CA）和 10 名言语智力匹配的正常发育儿童（MA）进行比较。采用混合设计方差分析（ANOVA），分析重点关注全 alpha（8-12.5Hz）、低 alpha（8-10Hz）、上 alpha（10-12.5Hz）和 beta（13-29.5Hz）频段，因为这些频段被认为与注意力和抑制过程具有功能意义。
在所有分析中，WS 组与 CA 组之间的 alpha 功率均无显著差异，但 WS 组的 alpha 功率呈数值降低趋势，这与其他以注意力/抑制缺陷为特征的发育障碍（如注意力缺陷多动障碍（ADHD））一致。相比之下，WS 组在 EC/EO 条件下的 beta 功率与 CA 组相当，这表明他们的脑电图特征基线与成功的注意力处理相当，但由于样本量较小，需要谨慎解释。分析还揭示了 WS 组脑电图特征中低变异性的异常趋势，这与行为上观察到的异质性相反。
WS 组脑电图频谱中低变异性的这一新颖发现与 ADHD 中较差的行为表现相关，这是非常有启发性的，强调了未来的研究还需要考虑 WS 脑电图谱中低变异性在其行为和认知特征中的作用。
