This study seeks to explore the early signs of cognitive impairment in patients with obstructive sleep apnea hypopnea syndrome (OSAHS). According to polysomnography, twenty patients diagnosed with OSAHS and twenty normal controls underwent event-related potential (ERP) examination including mismatch negativity (MMN) and P300. Compared with normal controls, OSAHS patients showed significantly prolonged latency of MMN and P300 at Cz. After controlling age and body mass index (BMI), MMN latency positively correlated with apnea hypopnea index (AHI), oxygen reduction index, stage N1 sleep and arousal index, while MMN latency negatively correlated with stage N3 sleep and mean blood oxygen saturation; and P300 latency positively related to AHI and oxygen reduction index; no relationships were found among MMN latency, MMN amplitude, P300 latency and P300 amplitude. These results suggest that the brain function of automatic processing and controlled processing aere impaired in OSAHS patients, and these dysfunction are correlated with nocturnal repeatedly hypoxemia and sleep structure disturbance.
Evolutionary psychology holds such an opinion that negative situation may threaten survival, trigger avoidance motive and have poor effects on the human body function and the psychological quality. Both disgusted and sad situations can induce negative emotions. However, differences between the two situations on attention capture and emotion cognition during the emotion induction are still not well known. Typical disgusted and sad situation images were used in the present study to induce two negative emotions, and 15 young students (7 males and 8 females, aged 27±3) were recruited in the experiments. Electroencephalogram of 32 leads was recorded when the subjects were viewing situation images, and event-related potentials (ERP) of all leads were obtained for future analysis. Paired sample t tests were carried out on two ERP signals separately induced by disgusted and sad situation images to get time quantum with significant statistical differences between the two ERP signals. Root-mean-square deviations of two ERP signals during each time quantum were calculated and the brain topographic map based on root-mean-square deviations was drawn to display differences of two ERP signals in spatial. Results showed that differences of ERP signals induced by disgusted and sad situation images were mainly manifested in T1 (120-450 ms) early and T2 (800-1 000 ms) later. During the period of T1, the occipital lobe reflecting attention capture was activated by both disgusted and sad situation images, but the prefrontal cortex reflecting emotion sense was activated only by disgusted situation images. During the period of T2, the prefrontal cortex was activated by both disgusted and sad situation images. However, the parietal lobe was activated only by disgusted situation images, which showed stronger emotional perception. The research results would have enlightenment to deepen understanding of negative emotions and to explore deep cognitive neuroscience mechanisms of negative emotion induction.
This study aims to explore the differences of event related potential (ERP) between attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and normal children, so that these differences provide scientific basis for the diagnosis of ADHD. Eight children were identified to be ADHD group by the diagnostic criteria of DSM IV (diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders IV), and the control group also consisted of 8 normal children. Modified visual continuous performance test (CPT) was used as the experiment paradigm. The experiment included two major conditions, i.e. Go and NoGo. All the 16 subjects participated in the study. A high density EEG acquisition instrument was used to record the EEG signal and processed these EEG data by means of ERP and spectrum analysis. P2 N2 peak peak value and spectral peak around 11 Hz were analyzed between ADHD subjects and those in the control group, and then statistical tests were applied to these two groups. Results showed that: ① Under the condition of Go, ADHD group had a significant lower P2 N2 peak peak value than the values in the control group ( P< 0.05); but under the condition of NoGo there was no significant difference in between. ② Compared with the control group, the ADHD group had significant lower spectral amplitude around 11 Hz under the condition of NoGo ( P< 0.05). However, under the condition of Go the difference was insignificant. In conclusion, there is certain cognitive dysfunction in ADHD children. P2-N2 peak-peak value and spectral peak around 11 Hz could be considered as clinical evaluation indexes of ADHD children′s cognitive function. These two objective indexes provide an early diagnosis and effective treatment of ADHD .
Cochlear implant (CI) is the only method for efficacious treatment of congenital severe deafness at present. However, for children with congenital severe deafness after CI, the mechanism of the structural and functional changes of their cerebral cortex is not clear. This study was based on the cross-modal reorganization of deaf patients. Event related potential (ERP) and source localization technique were used to visualize the change of cortical activity in children with congenital severe deafness during 1-year period (0, 1, 3, 6, 9 and 12 months after CI). We aimed to investigate the association between hearing restoration and cross-modal reorganization in children with congenital severe deafness after CI. The results showed that the cross-modal reorganization exists in children with congenital severe deafness. During hearing restoration, the function of the cross-modal reorganization reversed to the normal state. The method and conclusions of this study may be of significance in guiding the training and evaluation of hearing rehabilitation after CI in patients.