Cognitive Interference Processing in Adults with Childhood Craniopharyngioma Using Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Overview

Journal Endocrine

Specialty Endocrinology

Date 2021 Jul 22

PMID 34292485

Authors

Daniel Svard

Cecilia Follin

Sigridur Fjalldal

Robin Hellerstedt

Peter Mannfolk

Johan Martensson

Pia Sundgren

Eva Marie Erfurth

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Purpose: To assess cognitive interference processing in adults with childhood craniopharyngioma (CP), with and without hypothalamic injury, respectively, in terms of behavioral performance and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) activity, using the multi-source interference task (MSIT).

Methods: Twenty-eight CP patients (median age 34.5 [29.0-39.5] years) were investigated at median 20.5 (16.3-28.8) years after treatment with surgical resection and in some cases additional radiotherapy (n = 10) and compared to 29 matched controls (median age 37.0 [32.5-42.0] years). The subjects performed the MSIT during fMRI acquisition and behavioral performance in terms of response times (ms) and accuracy performance (%) were recorded.

Results: The MSIT activated the cingulo-fronto-parietal (CFP) attention network in both CP patients and controls. No differences were found in behavioral performance nor fMRI activity between CP patients (interference effect 333.9 [287.3-367.1] ms and 3.1 [1.6-5.6]%, respectively) and controls (309.1 [276.4-361.0] ms and 2.6 [1.6-4.9]%). No differences were found in behavioral performance nor fMRI activity between the two subgroups with (332.0 [283.6-353.4] ms and 4.2 [2.3-5.7]%, respectively) and without hypothalamic injury (355.7 [293.7-388.7] ms and 2.1 [1.0-5.2]%, respectively), respectively, and controls.

Conclusion: Adults with childhood CP performed cognitive interference processing equally well as controls and demonstrated no compensatory fMRI activity in the CFP attention network compared to controls. This was also true for the two subgroups with and without hypothalamic injury. The results can be useful to better characterize this condition, and to optimize treatment and support for these individuals.

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