Working memory impairment in children orphaned by parental HIV/AIDS: An event-related potentials study

ABSTRACT

A large body of literature has established that children orphaned by HIV/AIDS (‘AIDS orphans’) face numerous challenges, such as parental death, poverty, disrupted school attendance and stigma. All of these early life adversities can have long-lasting effects on brain function, especially the executive functions. Working memory, as one of the most studied aspects of executive functions, is also reported to be impaired in children with early adversity. However, limited data are available regarding how early life adverse events affect the neural dynamic associated with working memory processing in AIDS orphans. This study applied the electroencephalogram (EEG) technique to investigate the working memory process in 81 AIDS orphans and 62 non-orphan controls with n-back tasks. Results from EEG analysis and time-frequency analysis showed that AIDS orphans displayed smaller N2 and larger P2, P3 activation as well as enhanced theta and attenuated alpha band oscillations compared to the controls. The present findings indicated a deficit in working memory process in AIDS orphans and suggested that this deficit might be due to the impairments in attention allocation, detection and classification of stimuli and updating process in working memory.

KEYWORDS:

• Working memory
• children orphaned by parental HIV/AIDS
• event-related potentials
• time-frequency analysis
• China

Statement of Ethics

All subjects and their parents/legal guardians provided appropriate informed assent and consent for this study. The study protocol was approved by the Institutional Review Boards at University of South Carolina in the United States and Henan University in China (IRB 00007212). All methods were performed in accordance with the relevant guidelines and regulations.

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by US National Institute of Health [NIH, grant number 1R21HD087108]; National Social Science Foundation of China [NSSFC, grant number 19BSH111]; and Henan University Philosophy and Social Science Innovation Team [2019CXTD009].

Disclosure statement

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

Author contributions

Junfeng Zhao, Huang Gu, Peilian Chi, Xiaoming Li: Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; Final approval of the version to be published.

Lili Ji, Shunshun Du: Acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work.

Lili Ji, Qi Zhao, Shunshun Du: Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content.

Huang Gu, Qi Zhao: Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Institute of Health, National Social Science Foundation of China, Henan University Philosophy and Social Science Innovation Team. These sources were used to pay for equipment fees, subjects fees, travel/conference/international cooperation fees, publishing/documentation/intellectual property affairs fees.