Resumen
This study was aimed at exploring phaseamplitude
coupling (PAC) patterns of neural activity in
dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease (AD). For this task, five
minutes of spontaneous electroencephalographic (EEG) activity
from 22 patients with mild AD and 16 cognitively healthy
controls were studied. To assess PAC patterns, phase-locking
value was computed between the phase of low frequencies and
the power of high frequencies within each sensor. Our results
showed that high-frequency gamma power is phase-locked to
the alpha peak in EEG signals. Furthermore, statistically
significant differences (p<0.05, permutation test) between
patients with mild AD and elderly controls were observed at
the lower left temporo-parietal area, suggesting that early
stages of AD elicit a region-specific decrease of PAC in the
neural activity.
Patrocinador
This research was partially supported by: the ‘Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO)’ and FEDER under project TEC2014-53196-R; and the ‘Consejería de Educación de la Junta de Castilla y León’ under project VA037U16. P. Núñez is in receipt of a ‘Promoción de empleo joven e implantación de la Garantía Juvenile n I+D+i’ grant from MINECO and the University of Valladolid. J. Gómez-Pilar is in receipt of a PIF-UVA grant from the University of Valladolid. J. Poza, C. Gómez, M. García, P. Núñez, J. Gomez-Pilar and R. Hornero are with the Biomedical Engineering Group (GIB), Signal Theory and Communications Department, University of Valladolid, Paseo de Belén 15, 47011-Valladolid, Spain (phone: +34 983423000, ext. 5569; fax: +34 983423667; e-mail: jesus.poza@tel.uva.es). A. Bachiller is with the Research Centre for Biomedical Engineering (CREB), Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain (e-mail: alejandro.bachiller@upc.edu). M. A. Tola-Arribas is with the Department of Neurology, Río Hortega University Hospital, Valladolid, Spain (e-mail: mtola.nrl@gmail.com). M. Cano is with the Department of Clinical Neurophysiology, Río Hortega University Hospital, Valladolid, Spain (e-mail: mcanopo@saludcastillayleon.com).
