Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Division of Developmental Medicine, Boston Children's Hospital.
J Clin Child Adolesc Psychol. 2021 Nov-Dec;50(6):746-762. doi: 10.1080/15374416.2020.1796680. Epub 2020 Aug 18.
Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a highly prevalent and impairing neurodevelopmental disorder. While early childhood is a crucial time for early intervention, it is characterized by instability of ADHD diagnosis. Neural correlates of ADHD have potential to improve diagnostic accuracy; however, minimal research has focused on early childhood. Research indicates that disrupted neural connectivity is associated with ADHD in older children. Here, we explore network connectivity as a potential neural correlate of ADHD diagnosis in early childhood. We collected EEG data in 52 medication-naïve children with ADHD and in 77 typically developing controls (3-7 years). Data was collected with the EGI 128 HydroCel Sensor Net System, but to optimize the ICA, the data was down sampled to the 10-10 system. Connectivity was measured as the synchronization of the time series of each pair of electrodes. Subsequent analyses utilized graph theoretical methods to further characterize network connectivity. Increased global efficiency, which measures the efficiency of information transfer across the entire brain, was associated with increased inattentive symptom severity. Further, this association was robust to controls for age, IQ, SES, and internalizing psychopathology. Overall, our findings indicate that increased global efficiency, which suggests a hyper-connected neural network, is associated with elevated ADHD symptom severity. These findings extend previous work reporting disruption of neural network connectivity in older children with ADHD into early childhood.
注意缺陷多动障碍（ADHD）是一种高发且会造成损害的神经发育障碍。虽然儿童早期是进行早期干预的关键时期，但 ADHD 的诊断却不稳定。ADHD 的神经相关性有可能提高诊断的准确性；然而，很少有研究关注儿童早期。研究表明，神经连接的中断与年龄较大的儿童的 ADHD 有关。在这里，我们探索了网络连接作为 ADHD 儿童早期诊断的潜在神经相关性。我们收集了 52 名未经药物治疗的 ADHD 儿童和 77 名正常发育对照者（3-7 岁）的 EEG 数据。数据是用 EGI 128 水凝胶传感器网络系统收集的，但为了优化 ICA，数据被下采样到 10-10 系统。连接性是通过测量每个电极对的时间序列的同步来测量的。随后的分析利用图论方法进一步描述了网络连接。全局效率的增加，衡量的是整个大脑信息传递的效率，与注意力不集中症状严重程度的增加有关。此外，这种关联在控制年龄、智商、SES 和内化心理病理学后仍然存在。总的来说，我们的发现表明，全局效率的增加，表明神经网络的过度连接，与 ADHD 症状严重程度的升高有关。这些发现将以前报告的 ADHD 年龄较大儿童的神经网络连接中断的研究扩展到了儿童早期。
