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arXiv · 1608.05778

Reaction time impairments in decision-making networks as a diagnostic marker for traumatic brain injuries and neurodegenerative diseases

Pedro D. Maia·J. Nathan Kutz
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Abstract

The presence of diffuse Focal Axonal Swellings (FAS) is a hallmark cellular feature in many neurodegenerative diseases and traumatic brain injury. Among other things, the FAS have a significant impact on spike-train encodings that propagate through the affected neurons, leading to compromised signal processing on a neuronal network level. This work merges, for the first time, three fields of study: (i) signal processing in excitatory-inhibitory (EI) networks of neurons via population codes, (ii) decision-making theory driven by the production of evidence from stimulus, and (iii) compromised spike-train propagation through FAS. As such, we demonstrate a mathematical architecture capable of characterizing compromised decision-making driven by cellular mechanisms. The computational model also leads to several novel predictions and diagnostics for understanding injury level and cognitive deficits, including a key finding that decision-making reaction times, rather than accuracy, are indicative of network level damage. The results have a number of translational implications, including that the level of network damage can be characterized by the reaction times in simple cognitive and motor tests.

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Pedro D. Maia, J. Nathan Kutz. 2016-08-20. Reaction time impairments in decision-making networks as a diagnostic marker for traumatic brain injuries and neurodegenerative diseases. https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.05778

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