Review on the relationship between selective attention and neural oscillations / 生物医学工程学杂志

Selective attention promotes the perception of brain to outside world and coordinates the allocation of limited brain resources. It is a cognitive process which relies on the neural activities of attention-related brain network. As one of the important forms of brain activities, neural oscillations are closely related to selective attention. In recent years, the relationship between selective attention and neural oscillations has become a hot issue. The new method that using external rhythmic stimuli to influence neural oscillations, i.e., neural entrainment, provides a promising approach to investigate the relationship between selective attention and neural oscillations. Moreover, it provides a new method to diagnose and even to treat the attention dysfunction. This paper reviewed the research status on the relationship between selective attention and neural oscillations, and focused on the application prospects of neural entrainment in revealing this relationship and diagnosing, even treating the attention dysfunction.

Dysfunction of visual attention in patients with hypertension: an event-related potentials study / 中华行为医学与脑科学杂志

Objective To investigate the characteristics and neural mechanisms of visual attention dysfunction in patients with hypertension using the event related potentials(ERPs).Methods Visual Oddball pattern was adopted to analyze P3a and P3b components of 15 essential hypertensives and 15 normotensives,and all the participants were submitted to cognitive assessment by Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE).Results ①Novelty stimulus:the mean amplitude of N2 in hypertensive patients ((1.56± 1.15) μV) was decreased than normal controls ((-2.19±1.15) μV,P＜0.05),particularly at forehead-central sites (P＜0.05).In addition,the amplitude of P3a of hypertensive patients ((6.27± 1.01) μV) was different from normal controls ((7.09± 1.01) μV),but there was no statistical significance(P＞0.05).The latency of visual P3a was significantly longer in patients with hypertension group ((432.83 ± 8.22) ms) than that in control group ((403.10 ± 8.22) ms,P＞ 0.05).②Target stimulus:compared with control group ((6.75 ±0.90)μV),visual P3b amplitude in hypertension group ((4.08 ± 0.90) μV) was significantly declined (P＜ 0.05).Besides,the latency of visual P3b of hypertensive patients ((440.70 ± 6.42) ms) was different from normal controls ((436.91±6.42) ms),but there was no statistical significance(P＞0.05).③Compared with control group (27.31± 1.22),the M MSE score of patients with hypertension (24.55±2.42) was decreased (P＜0.05).The amplitude of visual P3b was positively correlated with MMSE scores in parietal region(r=0.51,P＜0.05).Conclusions The abilities of visual involuntary attention and voluntary attention are damaged in patients with hypertension,the impact degree of hypertension on two kinds of attention and the neural mechanisms are different.Moreover,there is a significant positive correlation between the amplitude of visual P3b and MMSE,which prompts that visual P3b for clinical early assessment of attention in patients with hypertension provides more objective neurophysiological basis.