Neural Noise

Abnormal resting-state EEG delta and alpha rhythms in Huntington's and Alzheimer's disease

2 min read

  • Resting-state EEG shows abnormal delta and alpha rhythms in Huntington’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease in exploratory studies.1
  • Band-specific resting-state EEG is a direct electrophysiology method for neurodegenerative disease characterization.1 1

Weekly enrichment (2026-07-20)

  • The exploratory study analyzed resting-state EEG from 35 patients with Huntington’s disease (HD), 81 with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and 102 healthy controls (HC), estimating cortical source activations from 30 electrodes with eLORETA and harmonizing data across clinical sites.2
  • Relative to controls, both HD and AD groups showed widespread increases in delta source activation and decreases in alpha source activation, with HD patients exhibiting the most pronounced frontal slowing.2
  • In HD, delta activity increased across central, parietal, occipital, and frontal regions and alpha decreased in frontal, temporal, and limbic areas, whereas AD patients showed comparatively higher alpha-1 and theta activity in temporal and limbic regions.3
  • Delta/alpha-2 and delta/alpha-3 ratios were significantly increased in HD across multiple regions; higher occipital and parietal delta predicted worse motor performance and lower cognitive scores, and central/parietal delta/alpha-3 correlated with reduced functional capacity.3
  • The authors concluded HD is characterized by a particular slowing of frontal resting-state rhythms tied to clinically relevant variables, hypothesizing a greater impact on the sleep-wake cycle; results are labeled exploratory and requiring validation with enhanced vigilance monitoring during longer recordings.24
  • The paper (Jakhar, Noce, Del Percio et al.) was published online January 25, 2026 in Clinical Neurophysiology (Vol. 184, April 2026) and used low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography (LORETA/eLORETA) source modeling.24
  • A companion conference analysis of cortical neural synchronization (HD N=29, AD N=24, older controls N=29) similarly found HD > AD widespread delta activity, with the most severe motor, cognitive, and functional deficits linked to very high delta and low alpha source activity.5
  • The delta/alpha source ratio has prior precedent as a single-marker classifier in AD: an earlier Babiloni-group study of 127 AD and 121 healthy elderly reported 77.2% sensitivity, 65% specificity, and an AUROC of 0.75 using parieto-occipital delta/alpha-1 sources.6

Footnotes

  1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1388245726000179?dgcid=rss_sd_all ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  2. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clinph.2026.2111518 ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  3. https://www.rarediseaseadvisor.com/news/hd-shows-distinctive-brain-rhythm-slowing-sleep-wake-cycle-impact/ ↩ ↩2

  4. https://www.ant-neuro.com/blog/publication-7/abnormal-resting-state-eeg-delta-and-alpha-rhythms-in-huntingtons-and-alzheimers-diseases-an-exploratory-study-2599 ↩ ↩2

  5. https://doi.org/10.1002/alz70855_106520 ↩

  6. https://doi.org/10.3233/jad-143042 ↩

Graph View