Researchers Identify Brain Connections Associated with ADHD

WASHINGTON — After examining more than 8,000 functional brain images of young people with ADHD, researchers have discovered their systems are tied to atypical interactions between the brain’s frontal cortex and the information processing centers deep inside the brain.

The research into attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder was conducted by scientists at the National Institute of Mental Health and National Human Genome Research Institute.

Their work was published in the latest edition of the American Journal of Psychiatry.

During the research Luke Norman, Ph.D., a staff scientist in the office of the clinical director at NIMH, and colleagues analyzed brain images supplied by more than 8,000 young people with and without ADHD sourced from six different functional imaging datasets. 

Using these images, the researchers examined associations between functional brain connectivity and ADHD symptoms.

They found that youths with ADHD had heightened connectivity between structures deep in the brain involved in learning, movement, reward, and emotion and structures in the frontal area of the brain involved in attention and control of unwanted behaviors.

While neuroscience researchers have long suspected that ADHD symptoms result from atypical interactions between the frontal cortex and these deep information-processing brain structures, studies testing this model have returned mixed findings, possibly due to the small nature of the studies, with only around 100 subjects. 

The researchers suggest that the smaller studies may not have been able to reliably detect the brain interactions leading to the complex behaviors seen in ADHD.

The findings from this study of the brain processes contributing to ADHD symptoms can help inform clinically relevant research and advancements.

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