Abstract
Prolactinomas have been reported for the failure of cognitive functions. However, the electrophysiological mechanisms of attention processing in prolactinomas remain unclear. In a visual mission, we monitored the scalp electroencephalography (EEG) of the participants. Compared with the healthy controls (HCs), larger frontoparietal theta and alpha coherence were found in the patients, especially in the right-lateralized hemisphere, which indicated a deficit in attention processing. Moreover, the frontoparietal coherence was positively correlated with altered prolactin (PRL) levels, implying the significance of PRL for adaptive brain compensation in prolactinomas. Taken together, this research showed the variations in attention processing between the HCs and prolactinomas. The coherence between frontal and parietal regions may be one of the possible electrophysiological biomarkers for detecting deficient attention processing in prolactinomas.
Highlights
Pituitary adenomas are the second most common intracranial tumors, accounting for about 16.5% of the central nervous system (CNS) tumors [1]
Under the negative and the positive targets, we observed a significant increase in the P200 peak of patients compared with healthy controls (HCs)
The findings showed the correlation between frontoparietal coherence and endogenous hormone levels in prolactinomas
Summary
Pituitary adenomas are the second most common intracranial tumors, accounting for about 16.5% of the central nervous system (CNS) tumors [1]. Apart from the physical damages, the functioning pituitary adenoma may abnormally secrete high hormone levels and, impair cognition functions in these patients with pituitary adenomas [4], leading to less social contact and lower living quality [5]. Electrophysiological research has manifested that altered levels of blood hormones can affect brain structure in pituitary patients with Cushing syndrome, acromegaly, Attention Processing in Prolactinomas and prolactinomas [11,12,13]. These researches above strongly demonstrate that disturbances in endogenous hormones could harm the brain structure and likely lead to corresponding brain dysfunctions. To date, no electrophysiological studies of frontoparietal networks in attention processing have been conducted on prolactinomas, which will be discussed in the present study by analyzing the event-related phase coherence (ERPCoh)
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