Activation in ventral prefrontal cortex is sensitive to genetic vulnerability for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Academic Article uri icon

Overview

abstract

  • BACKGROUND: Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a heritable neuropsychiatric disorder, associated with atypical patterns of brain activation in functional imaging studies. Neuroimaging measures may serve as an intermediate phenotype in genetic studies of ADHD, as they are putatively more closely linked to gene expression than a clinical diagnosis. METHODS: We used rapid, mixed-trial, event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate changes in brain activation during a go no-go task in boys with ADHD, their unaffected siblings, and matched control subjects. RESULTS: On the hardest inhibitory trials in our task, children and adolescents with ADHD had lower accuracy than control subjects, whereas their unaffected siblings did not. Control subjects activated a network of regions, including ventral prefrontal and inferior parietal cortex. Both children and adolescents with ADHD and their unaffected siblings showed decreased activation in these areas, as well as fewer correlations between performance and activation. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that the magnitude of activation during successful inhibitions is sensitive to genetic vulnerability for ADHD in a number of regions, including ventral prefrontal cortex. If this can be replicated in future studies, this suggests that neuroimaging measures related to inhibitory control may be suitable as intermediate phenotypes in studies investigating gene effects in ADHD.

publication date

  • May 19, 2006

Research

keywords

  • Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity
  • Family Health
  • Prefrontal Cortex

Identity

Scopus Document Identifier

  • 33750482252

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

  • 10.1016/j.biopsych.2005.12.020

PubMed ID

  • 16712804

Additional Document Info

volume

  • 60

issue

  • 10