Adrenocorticotropin widens the focus of attention in humans. A nonliner electroencephalographic analysis

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of ACTH (Corticotropin), published as a controlled clinical trial.

This study examined the effects of ACTH 4-10, a fragment of adrenocorticotropin (ACTH) with known central nervous system (CNS) activity, on the dimensional complexity of the ongoing electroencephalographic (EEG) activity.

Stressful stimuli cause ACTH to be released from the pituitary, and as a neuropeptide ACTH may concurrently exert adaptive influences on the brain's processing of these stimuli.

Previous studies have indicated an impairing influence of ACTH on selective attention.

Who Took Part

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were adults, men only.

Dimensional complexity of the EEG, which indexes the brain's way of stimulus processing, was evaluated while subjects performed tasks with different attention demands.

The EEG was recorded while subjects were presented with a dichotic listening task (consisting of the concurrent presentation of tone pips to the left and right ear).

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a double-blind, placebo-controlled and crossover study.

As a double-blind ACTH (Corticotropin) study, the assignments were hidden from both participants and investigators until the end.

Some participants received a placebo instead of ACTH (Corticotropin), giving a reference point.

In the crossover set-up each of the participants took both ACTH (Corticotropin) and the comparison in turn, acting as their own control.

Subjects either a) listened to pips in both ears (divided attention), or b) listened selectively to pips in one ear (selective attention), or c) ignored all pips.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Adrenocorticotropic Hormone, Analysis of Variance, Attention, Cerebral Cortex, Electroencephalography, Evoked Potentials, Auditory and Frontal Lobe.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a double-blind, placebo-controlled and crossover study of ACTH (Corticotropin).

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 3 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 1997 (Psychosomatic medicine), a journal based in United States.

More context: the ACTH (Corticotropin) compound page, all human trials.