RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Unique Neurophysiological Vulnerability of Visual Attention Networks to Acute Inflammation
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 599159
DO 10.1101/599159
A1 Leonie JT Balter
A1 Jos A Bosch
A1 Sarah Aldred
A1 Mark T Drayson
A1 Jet JCS Veldhuijzen van Zanten
A1 Suzanne Higgs
A1 Jane E Raymond
A1 Ali Mazaheri
YR 2019
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/04/04/599159.abstract
AB Illness is often accompanied by perceived cognitive sluggishness, a symptom that may stem from immune system activation. The current study used electroencephalography (EEG) to assess how inflammation affected three different distinct attentional processes: alerting, orienting and executive control. In a double-blinded placebo-controlled within-subjects design (20 healthy males, mean age = 24.5, SD = 3.4), Salmonella typhoid vaccination (0.025 mg; Typhim Vi, SanofiPasteur) was used to induce transient mild inflammation, while a saline injection served as a placebo-control. Participants completed the Attention Network Test with concurrent EEG recorded six hours post-injection. Analyses focused on behavioral task performance and on modulation of oscillatory EEG activity in the alpha band (9-12 Hz) for alerting as well as orienting attention and frontal theta band (4-8 Hz) for executive control. Vaccination induced mild systemic inflammation, as assessed by interleukin-6 (IL-6) levels. While no behavioral task performance differences between the inflammation and placebo condition were evident, inflammation caused significant alterations to task-related brain activity. Specifically, inflammation produced greater cue-induced suppression of alpha power in the alerting aspect of attention while individual variation in the inflammatory response was significantly correlated with the degree of alpha power suppression. Notably, inflammation did not affect orienting (i.e., alpha lateralization) or executive control (i.e., frontal theta activity). These results reveal a unique neurophysiological vulnerability to acute mild inflammation of the neural network that underpins attentional alerting functions. Observed in the absence of performance decrements, these novel findings suggest that acute inflammation requires individuals to exert greater cognitive effort when preparing for a task in order to maintain adequate behavioral performance.Highlights Typhoid vaccination induced a transient mild inflammatory stateMild inflammation alters neurophysiological process associated with attentionMild inflammation selectively increased alerting-related alpha suppression while behavior was unaffectedA greater inflammatory response was correlated with more alpha suppression