Parietal intrahemispheric source connectivity of resting-state electroencephalographic alpha rhythms is abnormal in Naïve HIV patients

Previous evidence showed abnormal parietal sources of resting-state electroencephalographic (EEG) delta (< 4 Hz) and alpha (8-12 Hz) rhythms in treatment-Naive HIV (Naive HIV) subjects, as cortical neural synchronization markers in quiet wakefulness. Here, we tested the hypothesis that these local abnormalities may be related to functional cortical dysconnectivity as an oscillatory brain network disorder.The present EEG database regarded 128 Naive HIV and 60 Healthy subjects. The eLORETA freeware estimated lagged linear EEG source connectivity (LLC). The area under receiver operating characteristic (AUROC) curve indexed the accuracy in the classification between Healthy and HIV individuals.Parietal intrahemispheric LLC solutions in alpha sources were abnormally lower in the Naive HIV than in the control group. Furthermore, those abnormalities were greater in the Naive HIV subgroup with executive and visuospatial deficits than the Naive HIV subgroup with normal cognition. AUROC curves of those LLC solutions exhibited moderate/good accuracies (0.75-0.88) in the discrimination between the Naive HIV individuals with executive and visuospatial deficits vs. Naive HIV individuals with normal cognition and control individuals.In quiet wakefulness, Naive HIV subjects showed clinically relevant abnormalities in parietal alpha source connectivity. HIV may alter a parietal "hub" oscillating at the alpha frequency in quiet wakefulness as a brain network disorder.