{"doi":"10.1016/j.bpsc.2024.07.022","title":"Dysfunctional Alpha Modulation as a Mechanism of Working Memory Impairment in Serious Mental Illness","abstract":"BACKGROUND: People with psychosis and mood disorders experience disruptions in working memory; however, the underlying mechanism remains unknown. We focused on 2 potential mechanisms: poor attentional engagement should be associated with elevated levels of prestimulus alpha-band activity within the electroencephalogram (EEG), whereas impaired working memory encoding should be associated with reduced poststimulus alpha suppression. METHODS: We collected EEG data from 68 people with schizophrenia, 43 people with bipolar disorder with a history of psychosis, 53 people with major depressive disorder, and 90 healthy comparison subjects while they completed a spatial working memory task. We quantified attention lapsing, memory precision, and memory capacity from the behavioral responses, and we quantified alpha using traditional wavelet analysis as well as a novel approach for isolating oscillatory alpha power from aperiodic elements of the EEG signal. RESULTS: We found that 1) greater prestimulus alpha power estimated using traditional wavelet analysis predicted behavioral errors; 2) poststimulus alpha suppression was reduced in the patient groups; and 3) reduced suppression was associated with a lower likelihood of memory storage. However, we also observed that the prestimulus alpha was larger among healthy control participants than patients, and single-trial analyses showed that it was the aperiodic elements of the prestimulus EEG-not oscillatory alpha-that predicted behavioral errors. DISCUSSION: These results suggest that working memory impairments in serious mental illness primarily reflect an impairment in the poststimulus encoding processes rather than reduced attentional engagement prior to stimulus onset.","journal":"Biological Psychiatry Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging","year":2024,"id":459906,"datarank":0.24141568686511508,"base_score":1.6094379124341003,"endowment":1.6094379124341003,"self_citation_contribution":0.24141568686511508,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.24141568686511508,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":4,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9614,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2024-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1286949,"name":"Megan A. Boudewyn","orcid":"0000-0001-7948-6303","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":431753,"name":"Kurt Winsler","orcid":"0000-0003-1536-6809","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1287404,"name":"Charlotte Li","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":232787,"name":"Deanna M. Barch","orcid":"0000-0003-1693-8506","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":516049,"name":"Cameron S. Carter","orcid":"0000-0001-7787-3166","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":230631,"name":"Michael J. Frank","orcid":"0000-0001-8451-0523","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":305901,"name":"James M. Gold","orcid":"0000-0002-0109-9554","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":326765,"name":"Angus W. MacDonald","orcid":"0000-0003-4588-931X","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":545729,"name":"J. Daniel Ragland","orcid":"0000-0001-5234-2414","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":567568,"name":"Steven M. Silverstein","orcid":"0000-0002-0699-0960","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":292235,"name":"Andrew P. Yonelinas","orcid":"0000-0002-9580-4997","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":241101,"name":"Steven J. Luck","orcid":"0000-0002-3725-1474","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1286948,"name":"Molly Erickson","orcid":"0000-0002-5311-4402","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":68,"raw_metadata":{"citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:03:59.428859Z","pmid":"39117276","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}