title: Selective attention impairment in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
abstract: Objective of this study was to evaluate attentional control mechanisms in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) using an auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) paradigm. Fifteen mild to moderate ALS patients and 15 healthy controls were administered a brief neuropsychological test battery and an ERPs paradigm assessing selective attention. Four types of auditory stimuli were presented in random order: short standard (200 Hz, 200 ms), long standard (200 Hz, 500 ms), short deviant (1000 Hz, 200 ms) and long deviant (1000 Hz, 500 ms). Participants had to respond to the long deviant stimuli only. During the task the electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded. The N200, P300 and re-orienting negativity (RON) ERP components were analysed. Compared to controls ALS patients showed reduced amplitudes and delayed latencies of N200, P300 and RON. These results could be attributable to both an alteration in change detection resulting in a reduction of the allocation and re-orientation of attentional resources or a general slowing or reduction of neural processing efficiency in the same system. The ERPs results support the hypothesis that ALS involves extramotor cognitive functions including auditory attentional processing at all processing stages, early (200 ms) and late (300-600 ms). These data prove the usefulness and sensitivity of the auditory ERPs in detection of cognitive functions in ALS patients.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Behavioural Neuroscience , IRCCS Fondazione Ospedale San Camillo , Venice , Italy .
authors.forename: Chiara
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Volpato
authors.affiliation: b Department of Neuroscience , University of Padova , Italy .
authors.forename: Maria Angeles
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Prats Sedano
authors.affiliation: a Department of Behavioural Neuroscience , IRCCS Fondazione Ospedale San Camillo , Venice , Italy .
authors.forename: Stefano
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Silvoni
authors.affiliation: a Department of Behavioural Neuroscience , IRCCS Fondazione Ospedale San Camillo , Venice , Italy .
authors.forename: Nicoletta
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Segato
authors.affiliation: a Department of Behavioural Neuroscience , IRCCS Fondazione Ospedale San Camillo , Venice , Italy .
authors.forename: Marianna
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Cavinato
authors.affiliation: a Department of Behavioural Neuroscience , IRCCS Fondazione Ospedale San Camillo , Venice , Italy .
authors.forename: Antonio
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Merico
authors.affiliation: a Department of Behavioural Neuroscience , IRCCS Fondazione Ospedale San Camillo , Venice , Italy .
authors.forename: Francesco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Piccione
authors.affiliation: c Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Pedagogy and Applied Psychology , University of Padova , Italy .|d Cognitive Neuroscience Centre , University of Padova , Italy , and.
authors.forename: Arianna
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Palmieri
authors.affiliation: a Department of Behavioural Neuroscience , IRCCS Fondazione Ospedale San Camillo , Venice , Italy .|e Institute for Medical Psychology and Behavioural Neurobiology, University of Tübingen , Germany.
authors.forename: Niels
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Birbaumer
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000368:Aged; D000690:Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis / Q000150:complications*; D001289:Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000209:etiology*; D002755:Choice Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005072:Evoked Potentials, Auditory / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D011571:Psychoacoustics; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric
keywords: Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; auditory event-related potentials; selective attention