The dysfunction of processing task-irrelevant emotional faces in pituitary patients: an evidence from expression-related visual mismatch negativity.

Evidence showed impaired cognitive ability of patients with pituitary adenoma as an intracranial tumor. In the present study, we investigated the preattentive processing of emotional faces in pituitary adenoma patients by recording and analyzing the visual mismatch negativity elicited by deviant emotional faces. In the normal control group, deviant emotional faces elicited expression-related mismatch negativity (EMMN), with a more pronounced negative waveform for sad than happy face conditions. Compared with the normal group, EMMN related to sad faces was smaller in patients, whereas the EMMN related to happy faces remained the same. These data indicate the functional dysfunction of negative emotional processing at the preattentive stage of information processing in pituitary adenoma patients.

The dysfunction of inhibition control in pituitary patients: evidence from the Go/Nogo event-related potential study.

Pituitary tumor is an intracranial tumor; because of the development of neuroimaging technology in recent years, morbidity is likely to increase. Evidence showed impaired cognitive ability of patients with pituitary adenoma. There is evidence that neurobehavioral disorders are common in pituitary adenoma patients. This disorder is because of the cognitive and emotional function of the important functional areas of the brain oppressed and hormone imbalance. Individuals' mental activity is controlled by the brain and the abnormal mental activity is caused by both the structural abnormalities of the brain and neurochemical dysfunction. Event-related potentials have been used widely in the early assessment of cognitive functions associated with disease, taking advantage of the high temporal resolution, and then analyzing the characteristics of emotional competence from the perspective of cognitive processing. A visual Go/Nogo task was used. A larger Nogo-N2 and Nogo-P3 was found in the control group compared with the pituitary group. This reflects the nonphysiological process of conflict monitoring and inhibitory control in pituitary patients. The results also showed that the difference waves between Go and Nogo conditions (N2d and P3d) over the frontal electrode sites were more robust and earlier in the control group compared with the pituitary group, which reflects frontal dysfunction in the pituitary group. These data suggest reduced earlier and later stages of inhibitory processes in pituitary individuals, implicating the dysfunction of conflict detection and inhibitory control.

Cognitive Function and Serum Hormone Levels Are Associated with Gray Matter Volume Decline in Female Patients with Prolactinomas.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Cognitive impairments have been reported in patients with hyperprolactinemia; however, there is a lack of knowledge of brain structure alterations relevant to hyperprolactinemia in prolactinomas. Thus, we aimed to identify changes in brain structure in prolactinomas and to determine whether these changes are related to cognitive performance and clinical characteristics. METHODS: Participants were 32 female patients with prolactinomas and 26 healthy controls (HC) matched for age, sex, education, and handedness. All participants underwent magnetic resonance imaging brain scans, neuropsychological assessments, and clinical evaluations. Voxel-based morphometry analysis was used to identify changes in gray matter volume (GMV). Partial correlation analysis and multiple linear regression were performed to determine the relationship between GMV, cognition, and clinical characteristics. RESULTS: Compared to HC, patients with prolactinomas demonstrated a decrease in GMV in the left hippocampus, left orbitofrontal cortex, right middle frontal cortex (MFC), and right inferior frontal cortex (IFC). In addition, patients performed worse than controls on tests for verbal memory and executive function, and this was significantly related to the GMV of the left hippocampus and right MFC, respectively. Moreover, in the patients, we found a negative relationship between serum prolactin levels and the GMV of the left hippocampus and right IFC, whereas a positive relationship was found between the GMV of the left hippocampus and serum levels of estradiol and luteinizing hormone. CONCLUSION: In patients with prolactinomas, specific brain structure abnormalities have been identified and are associated with cognitive impairments and dysfunctional hormones. This study enhances our understanding of brain structure changes that may occur with prolactinomas and provides novel and fundamental evidence for previous behavioral findings relevant to hyperprolactinemia.