Immediate effects of meditation in college students: A pilot study examining the role of baseline attention performance and trait mindfulness

OBJECTIVE

Determine feasibility of a procedure to identify relationships between preexisting traits and immediate mindfulness meditation (MM) responses in novice college students.

PARTICIPANTS

Twenty-four novice college students participated between September 2016 and April 2017.

METHODS

We measured trait mindfulness, attention and executive function performance, and immediate MM-related changes in self-reported state mindfulness and state anxiety following a 13-min MM.

RESULTS

The procedure appeared to be feasible and acceptable to college students. Preliminary findings included increases in state mindfulness and decreases in state anxiety, which appeared to vary by level of trait mindfulness. Better attention performance correlated with greater increases in state mindfulness of body.

CONCLUSION

This pilot study demonstrated feasibility of investigating the relationship between baseline traits and college students' immediate MM responses. Using these methods, future studies can provide a unique examination of MM effects stratified by validated facets of state mindfulness of body and mind.

Differential Cued-Stroop Performance in Cognitively Asymptomatic Older Adults with Biomarker-Identified Risk for Alzheimer's Disease: A Pilot Study

BACKGROUND

There exists a need for more sensitive measures capable of detecting subtle cognitive decline due to Alzheimer's disease.

OBJECTIVE

To advance the literature in Alzheimer's disease by demonstrating that performance on a cued-Stroop task is impacted by preclinical Alzheimer's disease neuropathology.

METHOD

Twenty-nine cognitively asymptomatic older adults completed a computerized, cued-Stroop task in which accuracy rates and intraindividual variability in reaction times were the outcomes of interest. Cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers of Aβ42 and tau were measured and participants were then grouped according to a published p-tau/Aβ42 cutoff reflecting risk for Alzheimer's disease (preclinical Alzheimer's disease = 14; control = 15).

RESULTS

ANOVAs indicated that accuracy rates did not differ between the groups but 4-second delay incongruent color-naming Stroop coefficient of variation reaction times were higher in the preclinical Alzheimer's disease group compared to the control group, reflecting increased within-person variability. Moreover, partial correlations showed no relationships between cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers and accuracy rates. However, increases in coefficient of variation reaction times correlated with decreased Aβ42 and increases in p-tau and the p-tau/Aβ42 ratio.

CONCLUSION

Results supported the ability of the computerized, cued-Stroop task to detect subtle Alzheimer's disease neuropathology using a small cohort of cognitively asymptomatic older adults. The ongoing measurement of cued-Stroop coefficient of variation reaction times has both scientific and clinical utility in preclinical Alzheimer's disease.

Apathy, Novelty Processing, and the P3 Potential in Parkinson's Disease

Parkinson's disease (PD) is characterized by deficits in goal-directed behavior as well as mood and motivational symptoms, including apathy, depression, and anxiety. The present study investigated novelty processing in PD, using event-related potentials (ERPs) to characterize electrophysiological reflections of visual novelty processing. Since apathy has been associated with decreased novelty processing (P3 potentials) in highly apathetic PD patients, we were particularly interested to see if this relationship exists in a sample of PD patients with heterogeneous levels of apathy. Non-demented patients with PD receiving dopaminergic treatment (n = 14) and healthy control participants (n = 12) completed a three-stimulus oddball task while EEG was recorded. Relative to controls, the PD patients exhibited reductions in centrofrontally distributed P3 potentials when viewing novel distracters during this task. Distracter-related P3 amplitudes evoked by novel distracters were strongly associated with apathy symptoms, even after controlling for the effects of depression, anxiety, and executive function. Executive dysfunction was also predictive of novelty-related P3 processing, yet this relationship was independent from that of apathy. These findings suggest that the brain's electrophysiological response to novelty is closely related to both motivational and cognitive symptoms in PD, even for patients whose apathy symptoms are not excessive. These results have significant implications for our understanding of non-motor symptoms in this clinical population.

An Event-Related Potential Investigation of the Effects of Age on Alerting, Orienting, and Executive Function

The present study compared young and older adults on behavioral and neural correlates of three attentional networks (alerting, orienting, and executive control). Nineteen young and 16 older neurologically-healthy adults completed the Attention Network Test (ANT) while behavioral data (reaction time and error rates) and 64-channel event-related potentials (ERPs) were acquired. Significant age-related RT differences were observed across all three networks; however, after controlling for generalized slowing, only the alerting network remained significantly reduced in older compared with young adults. ERP data revealed that alerting cues led to enhanced posterior N1 responses for subsequent attentional targets in young adults, but this effect was weakened in older adults. As a result, it appears that older adults did not benefit fully from alerting cues, and their lack of subsequent attentional enhancements may compromise their ability to be as responsive and flexible as their younger counterparts. N1 alerting deficits were associated with several key neuropsychological tests of attention that were difficult for older adults. Orienting and executive attention networks were largely similar between groups. Taken together, older adults demonstrated behavioral and neural alterations in alerting, however, they appeared to compensate for this reduction, as they did not significantly differ in their abilities to use spatially informative cues to aid performance (e.g., orienting), or successfully resolve response conflict (e.g., executive control). These results have important implications for understanding the mechanisms of age-related changes in attentional networks.

Orbitofrontal Cortex and the Early Processing of Visual Novelty in Healthy Aging

Event-related potential (ERP) studies have previously found that scalp topographies of attention-related ERP components show frontal shifts with age, suggesting an increased need for compensatory frontal activity to assist with top-down facilitation of attention. However, the precise neural time course of top-down attentional control in aging is not clear. In this study, 20 young (mean: 22 years) and 14 older (mean: 64 years) adults completed a three-stimulus visual oddball task while high-density ERPs were acquired. Colorful, novel distracters were presented to engage early visual processing. Relative to young controls, older participants exhibited elevations in occipital early posterior positivity (EPP), approximately 100 ms after viewing colorful distracters. Neural source models for older adults implicated unique patterns of orbitofrontal cortex (OFC; BA 11) activity during early visual novelty processing (100 ms), which was positively correlated with subsequent activations in primary visual cortex (BA 17). Older adult EPP amplitudes and OFC activity were associated with performance on tests of complex attention and executive function. These findings are suggestive of age-related, compensatory neural changes that may driven by a combination of weaker cortical efficiency and increased need for top-down control over attention. Accordingly, enhanced early OFC activity during visual attention may serve as an important indicator of frontal lobe integrity in healthy aging.

Neural time course of conflict adaptation effects on the Stroop task

Cognitive control theory suggests conflict effects are reduced following high- relative to low-conflict trials. Such reactive adjustments in control, frequently termed "conflict adaptation effects," indicate a dynamic interplay between regulative and evaluative components of cognitive control necessary for adaptable goal-directed behavior. The current study examined conflict adaptation effects while 36 neurologically-normal participants performed a single-trial color-naming Stroop task. Trials preceded by incongruent (high conflict) and congruent (low conflict) trials were compared for behavioral (response time [RT] and error rate) and electrophysiological (N450 and conflict SP components of the event-related potential [ERP]) concomitants of cognitive control. A conflict adaptation effect was present for RTs that could not be accounted for by associative or negative priming. ERPs revealed a parietal conflict slow potential (conflict SP) that differentiated incongruent from congruent trials and monotonically differentiated current trial congruency on the basis of previous-trial context (i.e., showed conflict adaptation); the fronto-medial N450 was sensitive to current trial congruency but not to previous-trial context. Direct comparison of normalized conflict SP and N450 amplitudes showed the conflict SP was sensitive to the effects of previous-trial context, while the N450 was so to a lesser extent and in a different pattern. Findings provide clarification on the neural time course of conflict adaptation and raise further questions regarding the relative roles of the parietal conflict SP and fronto-medial N450 in conflict detection and processing.

Characterization of the Medical Symptom Validity Test in evaluation of clinically referred memory disorders clinic patients

We prospectively evaluated performance of 63 referrals to a memory disorders clinic who received the Medical Symptom Validity Test (MSVT) as part of their standard neuropsychological evaluation. The patients were grouped based on independent medical diagnoses and presence or absence of a potential financial incentive to under-perform. Twenty-seven patients (42.9%) scored below cutoffs on the MSVT symptom validity indices. Two individuals in the potential financial incentive group showed clear signs of invalid responding (18.2%). Twenty-two of the remaining 25 patients who failed the symptom validity indices corresponded to the dementia profile. Three individuals did not correspond to the dementia profile but are thought to have performed validly representing a 4.8% false positive rate. When considering all MSVT indices, the base rate of invalid responding in the potential financial incentive to under-perform group increased to 27.3%. Combining all groups our base rate of invalid responding was 4.8%. Specific performances are presented.

Florida obsessive-compulsive inventory: Development, reliability, and validity

The Florida Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory (FOCI) is a new self-report questionnaire that has separate scales for symptom enumeration (The Checklist) and evaluation of symptom severity (Severity Scale). The present research investigated the FOCI in a sample of 113 patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The results indicated that the FOCI Severity Scale is internally consistent (alpha = .89) and highly correlated with the total score from the Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS; Goodman et al., 1989 a). The correlations of the FOCI Severity Scale with measures of depression and global severity of psychopathology were similar to those obtained with the Y-BOCS Total Severity Score. The FOCI Symptom Checklist had adequate reliability (K-R 20 = .83) and moderate correlations (rs < .45) with the FOCI Severity Scale, the Y-BOCS scales, and measures of depression and severity of psychopathology. These findings imply concurrent validity for the FOCI Severity Scale. A strength of the FOCI is that it offers a quick evaluation of both presence and severity of OCD symptoms. An important limitation is that the FOCI does not assess the severity of individual symptoms.