{"doi":"10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1096266","title":"Synergistic effects of high early-life stress exposure and HIV infection on reaction time variability","abstract":"Addressing comorbidities contributing to cognitive impairment in people living with HIV (PLWH) remains imperative. Prior studies utilizing reaction time intra-individual variability (RT-IIV), a robust behavioral marker of cognitive dysfunction, demonstrate increased cognitive impairment in adults living with HIV who have high early life stress (ELS) exposure relative to those with low-ELS exposure. Yet, it is unknown whether RT-IIV elevations are due to high-ELS alone or both HIV-status and high-ELS. In the current study, we explore the potential additive effects of HIV and high-ELS exposure on RT-IIV to better characterize the independent and combined effects of these factors on RT-IIV among PLWH. We assessed 59 PLWH and 69 HIV-negative healthy control (HC) participants with either low or high ELS on RT-IIV during a working memory task (1-back). We observed a significant interaction between HIV status and ELS exposure on RT-IIV, PLWH who had experienced high ELS demonstrating RT-IIV elevations relative to all other groups. In addition, RT-IIV was significantly associated with ELS exposure in PLWH, but not in the HC group. We also observed associations between RT-IIV and measures of HIV-disease severity (plasma HIV viral load, nadir CD4) among PLWH. Taken as a whole, these findings provide novel evidence of the combined effects of HIV and high-ELS exposure on RT-IIV, and thus suggest HIV-related and ELS-related neural abnormalities may act in an additive or synergistic manner to affect cognition. Such data warrant further investigation into the neurobiological mechanisms associated with HIV and high-ELS exposure that contribute to increased neurocognitive dysfunction among PLWH.","journal":"Frontiers in Psychology","year":2023,"id":406478,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9588,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1185747,"name":"Retina Kundu","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":415629,"name":"Roger McIntosh","orcid":"0000-0002-1084-072X","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1185748,"name":"Mabel Palmero","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1074412,"name":"Rachal Hegde","orcid":"0000-0002-8353-6956","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":502730,"name":"Marcel A. de Dios","orcid":"0000-0003-3750-2525","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":307836,"name":"Uraina S. Clark","orcid":"0000-0002-2683-6696","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1185746,"name":"Jordan Sergio","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":56,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:21:03.432924Z","pmid":"37139000","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":[]}