RT Conference Proceedings
T1 Association between salivary alpha-amylase and selective attention performance in healthy children
A1 Maldonado-Montero, Enrique Francisco
A1 Martínez-Escribano, Ana
A1 Marín, Laura
A1 Engüix Armada, Alfredo
A1 Álamo, Ana
A1 López, Cristina
A1 Magarin, Alba
A1 Ortiz, Paula
A1 Muñoz, Marina
A1 Garcia, Silvia
K1 Marcadores biológicos
K1 Niños - Psicología
AB Executive functioning is the result of the combined action of a complex set of high-level cognitive processes that emerge during childhood. These executive functions enable a child to manage challenging problems and regulate their emotional behaviour. Several studies have related the biomarker salivary Alpha-Amylase (sAA) to better executive functioning. sAA is a non-invasive biomarker that has been associated with improved executive function (according with its direct association with the total score of ENFEN) and working memory (WM) performance (according with an inverse association with auditory-verbal test of WISC 5) in recent studies conducted in our laboratory. The main aim of this study was to examine the association between selective attention performance and sAA in a sample of 63 children (38 boys). The BMI for the entire sample was 14,32 and the mean age (in months) was 119,21. Selective attention was assessed by means of D2 test, a neuropsychological tool employed with this purpose in clinical settings. Three parameters were derived: (a) number of correct responses, (b) number of errors of omission and (c) number of errors of commission. SAA activity, output and salivary flow rate (SFR) were measured as follows: baseline (10 minutes prior to testing), one minute prior to testing and one minute after the end of the test (see Figure 2 and Figure 3). Mean levels of these three parameters were calculated to conduct the correlational studies. Our statistical analyses revealed exclusively an association among delta sAA output and the number of commission errors but not with the number of correct responses or the number of omission errors. These results could suggest that an increased activity in Locus Coeruleus-Noradrenaline (LC-NE) System could be interfering the cognition and arousal regulation capacities of participants as suggest our previous findings on working memory. In this sense, SAA activity could be employ as a marker of impulsivity.
YR 2018
FD 2018-07-31
LK https://hdl.handle.net/10630/16387
UL https://hdl.handle.net/10630/16387
LA eng
NO Póster para congreso.
NO Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech.
DS RIUMA. Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Málaga
RD 3 mar 2026