Jaquerod Manon E, Mesrobian Sarah K, Villa Alessandro E P, Bader Michel, Lintas Alessandra
NeuroHeuristic Research Group, HEC-Lausanne, University of Lausanne, Quartier UNIL-Chamberonne, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.
University Service of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University Hospital of Lausanne, 1014 Lausanne, Switzerland.
Brain Sci. 2020 Jan 9;10(1):38. doi: 10.3390/brainsci10010038.
: Working memory (WM) deficits and impaired decision making are among the characteristic symptoms of patients affected by attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The inattention associated with the disorder is likely to be due to functional deficits of the neural networks inhibiting irrelevant sensory input. In the presence of unnecessary information, a good decisional process is impaired and ADHD patients tend to take risky decisions. This study is aimed to test the hypothesis that the level of difficulty of a WM training (WMT) is affecting the top-down modulation of the attentional processes in a probabilistic gambling task. : Event-related potentials (ERP) triggered by the choice of the amount wagered in the gambling task were recorded, before and after WMT with a the dual -back task, in young ADHD adults and matched controls. For each group of participants, randomly assigned individuals were requested to perform WMT with a fixed baseline level of difficulty. The remaining participants were trained with a performance-dependent adaptive -level of difficulty. : We compared the ERP recordings before and after 20 days of WMT in each subgroup. The analysis was focused on the time windows with at least three recording sites showing differences before and after training, after Bonferroni correction ( p < 0.05 ). In ADHD, the P1 wave component was selectively affected at frontal sites and its shape was recovered close to controls' only after adaptive training. In controls, the strongest contrast was observed at parietal level with a left hemispheric dominance at latencies near 900 ms, more after baseline than after adaptive training. : Partial restoration of early selective attentional processes in ADHD patients might occur after WMT with a high cognitive load. Modified frontal sites' activities might constitute a neural marker of this effect in a gambling task. In controls, conversely, an increase in late parietal negativity might rather be a marker of an increase in transfer effects to fluid intelligence.
工作记忆（WM）缺陷和决策受损是注意缺陷多动障碍（ADHD）患者的典型症状。与该障碍相关的注意力不集中可能是由于抑制无关感觉输入的神经网络功能缺陷所致。在存在不必要信息的情况下，良好的决策过程会受到损害，ADHD患者往往会做出冒险决策。本研究旨在检验以下假设：WM训练（WMT）的难度水平会影响概率性赌博任务中注意力过程的自上而下调节。
在年轻的ADHD成年人及匹配的对照组中，在进行双背任务的WMT前后，记录赌博任务中下注金额选择所触发的事件相关电位（ERP）。对于每组参与者，随机分配个体以固定的基线难度水平进行WMT。其余参与者则以依赖表现的自适应难度水平进行训练。
我们比较了每个亚组在WMT 20天前后的ERP记录。分析集中在经Bonferroni校正后（p<0.05）至少有三个记录位点在训练前后显示出差异的时间窗。在ADHD患者中，P1波成分在额叶部位受到选择性影响，只有在进行自适应训练后其形状才恢复到接近对照组。在对照组中，在顶叶水平观察到最强的对比，在接近900毫秒的潜伏期左半球占优势，基线训练后比自适应训练后更明显。
在进行高认知负荷的WMT后，ADHD患者早期选择性注意过程可能会部分恢复。额叶部位活动的改变可能构成赌博任务中这种效应的神经标志物。相反，在对照组中，晚期顶叶负波的增加可能更像是向流体智力转移效应增加的标志物。
