Spontaneous cortical activity is altered in persons with HIV and related to domain-specific cognitive function.

Whilst the average lifespan of persons with HIV now approximates that of the general population, these individuals are at a much higher risk of developing cognitive impairment with ∼35-70% experiencing at least subtle cognitive deficits. Previous works suggest that HIV impacts both low-level primary sensory regions and higher-level association cortices. Notably, multiple neuroHIV studies have reported elevated levels of spontaneous cortical activity during the pre-stimulus baseline period of task-based experiments, but only a few have examined such activity during resting-state conditions.