BACKGROUND:Chronic hypertension is known to be a major contributor to cognitive decline, with executive function and working memory being among the domains most commonly affected. Despite the growing literature on such dysfunction in patients with hypertension, the underlying neural processes are poorly understood.METHODS:In this cross-sectional study, we examine these neural processes by having participants with controlled hypertension, uncontrolled hypertension, and healthy controls perform a verbal working memory task during magnetoencephalography. Neural oscillations associated with the encoding and maintenance components of the working memory task were imaged and statistically evaluated among the 3 groups.RESULTS:Differences related to hypertension emerged during the encoding phase, where the hypertension groups exhibited weaker α-β oscillatory responses compared with controls in the left parietal cortices, whereas such oscillatory activity differed between the 2 hypertension groups in the right prefrontal regions. Importantly, these neural responses in the prefrontal and parietal cortices during encoding were also significantly associated with behavioral performance across all participants.CONCLUSIONS:Overall, our data suggest that hypertension is associated with neurophysiological abnormalities during working memory encoding, whereas the neural processes serving maintenance seem to be preserved. The right hemispheric neural responses likely reflected compensatory processing, which patients with controlled hypertension may use to achieve verbal working memory function at the level of controls, as opposed to the uncontrolled hypertension group where diminished resources may have limited such additional recruitment.

中文翻译：

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高血压影响服务于言语工作记忆编码阶段的振荡动力学


背景：众所周知，慢性高血压是认知能力下降的主要原因，其中执行功能和工作记忆是最常受影响的领域。尽管关于高血压患者这种功能障碍的文献越来越多，但人们对潜在的神经过程知之甚少。 方法：在这项横断面研究中，我们通过让高血压受控者、未受控高血压者和健康对照者进行言语测试来检查这些神经过程。脑磁图期间的工作记忆任务。对三组与工作记忆任务的编码和维持部分相关的神经振荡进行成像和统计评估。结果：在编码阶段出现了与高血压相关的差异，与对照组相比，高血压组表现出较弱的α-β振荡反应左顶叶皮质中的振荡活动不同，而右前额叶区域的两个高血压组之间的振荡活动不同。重要的是，编码过程中前额叶和顶叶皮质的这些神经反应也与所有参与者的行为表现显着相关。结论：总体而言，我们的数据表明高血压与工作记忆编码过程中的神经生理异常相关，而服务于维持的神经过程似乎予以保存。右半球的神经反应可能反映了补偿性处理，高血压得到控制的患者可能会利用这种补偿性处理来实现对照水平的言语工作记忆功能，而不受控制的高血压组则相反，在未受控制的高血压组中，资源的减少可能限制了这种额外的募集。