Alterations of resting-state Gamma frequency characteristics in aging and Alzheimer's disease

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is an important brain disease associated with aging. It involves various functional and structural changes which alter the EEG characteristics. Although numerous studies have found changes in delta, theta, alpha, and beta power, fewer studies have looked at the changes in the resting state EEG gamma activity characteristics in AD. This study aimed to investigate the alterations in the frequency and power values of AD patients' resting-state EEG gamma oscillations compared with healthy elderly and young subjects. We performed Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) on the resting state EEG data from 179 participants, including 59 early stage AD patients, 60 healthy elderly, and 60 healthy young subjects. We averaged FFT performed epochs to investigate the power values in the gamma frequency range (28-48 Hz). We then sorted the peaks of power values in the gamma frequency range, and the average of the identified highest three values was named as the gamma dominant peak frequency. The gamma dominant peak frequency of AD patients (M_eyes-opened = 33.4 Hz, M_eyes-closed = 32.7 Hz) was lower than healthy elderly (M_eyes-opened = 35.5 Hz, M_eyes-closed = 35.0 Hz) and healthy young subjects (M_eyes-opened = 37.2 Hz, M_eyes-closed = 37.0 Hz). These results could be related to AD progression and therefore critical for the recent findings regarding the 40 Hz gamma entrainment because it seems they entrain the gamma frequency of AD towards that of healthy young.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11571-022-09873-4.