Age-related visual dynamics in HIV-infected adults with cognitive impairment

Abstract

ObjectiveTo investigate whether aging differentially affects neural activity serving visuospatial processing in a large functional neuroimaging study of HIV-infected participants and to determine whether such aging effects are attributable to differences in the duration of HIV infection.MethodsA total of 170 participants, including 93 uninfected controls and 77 HIV-infected participants, underwent neuropsychological assessment followed by neuroimaging with magnetoencephalography (MEG). Time-frequency analysis of the MEG data followed by advanced image reconstruction of neural oscillatory activity and whole-brain statistical analyses were used to examine interactions between age, HIV infection, and cognitive status. Post hoc testing for a mediation effect of HIV infection duration on the relationship between age and neural activity was performed using a quasi-Bayesian approximation for significance testing.ResultsCognitively impaired HIV-infected participants were distinguished from unimpaired HIV-infected and control participants by their unique association between age and gamma oscillations in the parieto-occipital cortex. This relationship between age and gamma was fully mediated by the duration of HIV infection in cognitively impaired participants. Impaired HIV-infected participants were also distinguished by their atypical relationship between alpha oscillations and age in the superior parietal cortex.ConclusionsImpaired HIV-infected participants exhibited markedly different relationships between age and neural responses in the parieto-occipital cortices relative to their peers. This suggests a differential effect of chronological aging on the neural bases of visuospatial processing in a cognitively impaired subset of HIV-infected adults. Some of these relationships were fully accounted for by differences in HIV infection duration, whereas others were more readily associated with aging.

The age-related trajectory of visual attention neural function is altered in adults living with HIV: A cross-sectional MEG study

“…Perhaps most relevant to the current study, Wiesman and colleagues found that some occipital neural responses during a visual processing task distinguished PWH based on their impairment status and were significantly correlated with behavioral performance [37] . A more recent study using a similar visual processing task extended these findings by showing that such neural dynamics were differentially affected by age in PWH and controls [38] . Finally, a multimodal neuroimaging (MEG and MRI) study suggested that at least some aberrant oscillatory neural responses in PWH may be associated with reductions in local grey matter volume [39] .…”

Multimodal neuroimaging markers of variation in cognitive ability in older HIV+ men

“…EEG is non-invasive and relatively inexpensive, so could be feasible even in resource-poor settings. There is evidence, albeit mainly from small samples, that measures from EEG (or the related technique of magnetoencephalography (MEG)) can distinguish HIV+ from HIV-groups, as well as groups with and without HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders (HAND) [16][17][18][19]. However, little work has been done to identify EEG markers associated with individual differences in cognitive performance amongst people with HIV; such markers could shed light on the underlying pathophysiology of cognitive impairment and serve as candidates for diagnostic or interventionmonitoring purposes at the individual level.…”

Multimodal neuroimaging markers of variation in cognitive ability in older HIV+ men

“…EEG is non-invasive and relatively inexpensive, so could be made widely available, even in resource-poor settings, yet there has been surprisingly little application of these methods in HIV (Fernández-Cruz & Fellows, 2017). There is evidence, albeit mainly from small sample studies, that EEG/MEG measures can distinguish people with HIV infection from HIV-controls, and HIV+ individuals with and without HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders (HAND) (Fernández-Cruz & Fellows, 2017; Groff et al, 2020; Lew et al, 2018; Wiesman et al, 2018).…”