Acoustic Interference on Attention in HIV Patients

描述(由申请人提供)： HIV感染者通常在注意力、注意力、反应时间和短期工作记忆方面存在缺陷。功能磁共振成像(FMRI)是研究这些缺陷的一种近乎理想的技术，因为它允许实时非侵入性地观察大脑的激活。然而，在功能磁共振成像过程中，高水平的固有声学噪声是一个令人担忧的问题，因为声学噪声可以产生虚假的激活或改变功能磁共振成像信号。声学噪声干扰也可能对健康对照受试者和认知障碍患者产生不同的影响。因此，该项目的具体目标是：1)调查噪声对血清阴性对照受试者的fMRI激活的影响，作为性别的函数；2)确定噪声对HIV患者工作记忆和视觉注意的fMRI研究的影响。我们的具体假设是：1)在对照组受试者中，fMRI-声噪声将增加注意网络中的大脑激活(基本原理：噪声干扰将有神经补偿)；2)这种影响在女性中将比男性更大(基本原理：女性比男性对听觉刺激更敏感)；以及3)在血清阳性的男性中，注意网络中大脑激活的增加将比血清阴性的男性更大(声音噪声与HIV状态之间的相互作用)。FMRI将在两种不同的声压级(4特斯拉声场)下进行，同时受试者执行一系列工作记忆和视觉注意任务，这些任务专门为检测艾滋病毒患者的异常而设计。这将使确定fMRI-声学噪声如何影响大脑激活成为可能，无论是在健康受试者还是艾滋病毒患者中。从这项研究中获得的知识将使量化噪声对HIV患者脑损伤的fMRI研究的影响成为可能。如果我们的假设被证明是正确的，这项为期一年的研究结果将使我们能够在未来的R01项目中进一步调查噪音对滥用药物的艾滋病毒患者注意力的影响。更广泛地说，这项研究还将提高对健康人群进行fMRI研究期间声噪声干扰的神经影响的理解。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Patients with HIV infection commonly present with deficits in concentration, attention, reaction times, and short-term working memory. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a nearly ideal technique to study these deficits because it allows the non-invasive observation of brain activation in real-time. However, high intrinsic levels of acoustic noise during fMRI are a concern because acoustic noise can produce spurious activation or alter the fMRI signals. Acoustic noise interference may also be expected to have differential effects in healthy control subjects and patients with cognitive impairments. Therefore, the specific aims of the project are: 1) to investigate the effect of acoustic noise on fMRI activation in seronegative control subjects, as a function of gender, and 2) to determine the effect of acoustic noise on fMRI studies of working memory and visual attention, in patients with HIV. Our specific hypotheses are 1) in control subjects, fMRI-acoustic noise will increase brain activation in the attentional network (rationale: there will be neural compensation for acoustic noise interference); 2) this effect will be larger in women than in men (rationale: woman are more sensitive to auditory stimuli than men); and 3) increased brain activation in the attentional network will be greater in seropositive men than in seronegative men (interaction between the acoustic noise and HIV status). fMRI will be performed at two different sound pressure levels (at 4 Tesla field) while subjects perform a battery of working memory and visual attention tasks designed specifically to detect abnormalities in patients with HIV. This will make it possible to determine how fMRI-acoustic noise affects brain activation, both in healthy subjects and in HIV patients. The knowledge gained from this study will make it possible to quantify the effect of acoustic noise on fMRI studies of brain injury in patients with HIV. If our hypotheses prove to be correct, the results of this one-year study would allow us to further investigate the effects of acoustic noise on attention in HIV patients who abuse drugs, in a future R01 project. More generally, this study will also improve the understanding of the neural effects of acoustic noise interference during fMRI studies in healthy populations.