Abstract
Cognitive abilities are impaired in patients with pituitary adenoma. However, studies on attention processing impairment in preoperative patients and attention processing recovery after transsphenoidal adenomectomy are lacking. The study aims to identify the electrophysiological change that relates to attention processing in pituitary patients before and after treatment. Twenty five preoperative pituitary patients and 25 follow-up postoperative patients were recruited. 27 healthy controls (HCs) were matched to the patients with age, gender, and education. Event-related potentials were used to investigate the attention processing in the preoperative patients, postoperative patients, and HCs. Across three groups, all emotional stimuli evoked P200 components. Compared with the HCs or postoperative patients, the amplitudes of P200 in the preoperative patients were higher. Moreover, The amplitudes of P200 decreased in the postoperative patients, which were similar to that in the HCs. The attention processing was improved after surgery, but no significant differences were detected between the postoperative patients and HCs. Abnormal hormone levels may be relevant to the factor that impair attention processing. Compared with that of the HCs and postoperative patients, the P200 component elicited by negative stimuli is higher in preoperative patients, which may illustrate compensatory activity after attention impairments. Furthermore, these data indicate that improvements in attention processing may be attributed to the amelioration of endocrine disorders. This study shows that the P200 component may be used to diagnose attention processing in preoperative pituitary patients and prove the improvement of attention processing in postoperative patients.
Highlights
Pituitary adenomas are the most common intracranial tumors following meningiomas, accounting for about 16.5% of central nervous system tumors [1], and pituitary adenoma with inconspicuous symptoms have a higher incidence
Tumor size may have underlying effects on our results because studies have shown that the brain structure changes in pituitary patients, which were caused by macroadenomas [25,26,27]
Our study found that patients with prolactinomas showed a decrease of gray matter volume (GMV) in the whole prefrontal cortex [36] suggesting that abnormal high PRL levels may harm cognitive function
Summary
Pituitary adenomas are the most common intracranial tumors following meningiomas, accounting for about 16.5% of central nervous system tumors [1], and pituitary adenoma with inconspicuous symptoms have a higher incidence. Neuropsychological deficits have been identified in traumatic brain injury (TBI) patients [6, 7]. Neuropsychological problems were detected in 67 percent of TBI patients, and they were linked to intracerebral hemorrhagic lesions rather than post-traumatic pituitary insufficiency [9]. Apart from the physical damages, abnormal hormone levels could impair the cognition functions in pituitary adenoma patients. Many studies on affective neuroscience have identified neural networks distributed in the brain and involved in the processing of emotional expressions on the face. These neural networks include the prefrontal, basal ganglia and amygdala regions, which contribute to emotional detection and semantic processing [14]
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