UNC scientists use MRI to observe altered neural flexibility in children with ADHD

UNC scientists use MRI to observe altered neural flexibility in children with ADHD

Multitasking isn't just an office skill. It's key to functioning as a human, and it involves something called cognitive flexibility - the ability to switch smoothly between mental processes. UNC scientists conducted a study to map the neural activity analogs of cognitive flexibility and discover differences in brain activity between children with ADHD and those without ADHD.

Their findings, published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, could help doctors diagnose children with ADHD and monitor the severity of the condition and the effectiveness of treatment.

Some people are more cognitively flexible than others. It's just the luck of the genetic draw in some ways, although we can improve our cognitive flexibility once we realize we're inflexible. Think of it this way: We are cognitively flexible if we start dinner, simmer the onions, text a friend, return to dinner without burning the onions, and then finish dinner while simultaneously chatting with your spouse. We are also cognitively flexible when we switch communication styles while talking to a friend and then to a daughter and then to a colleague, or when we solve problems creatively, say when you realize you don't have onions to make the dinner you want. So you need a new plan.

It is part of our executive function, which includes accessing memories and displaying self-control. Poor executive function is a hallmark of ADHD in children and adults.

When we are cognitively inflexible, we cannot concentrate on some of the tasks, we pick up the phone and scroll through social media without thinking, and forget what we are doing while preparing dinner. In adults, but especially in children, such cognitive inflexibility can have devastating effects on an individual's ability to learn and perform tasks.

UNC scientists led by senior author Weili Lin, PhD, director of the UNC Biomedical Research Imaging Center (BRIC), wanted to find out what happens throughout the brain when executive function, particularly cognitive flexibility, is offline.

Lin and colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the neural flexibility of 180 children diagnosed with ADHD and 180 typically developing children.

We observed significantly reduced neural flexibility in the ADHD group at both the whole-brain and sub-network levels, particularly for the default mode network, attention-related networks, executive function-related networks, and primary brain networks involved in sensory, motor functions, and visual processing.”

Weili Lin, Dixie Boney Soo Distinguished Professor of Neurological Medicine in the Department of Radiology at UNC

The researchers also found that children with ADHD who received medication had significantly increased neural flexibility compared to children with ADHD who did not take medication. Children on medication demonstrated neural flexibility that was not statistically different from the group of traditionally developing children.

Finally, the researchers found that they could use fMRI to detect differences in neural flexibility across entire brain regions between children with ADHA and the traditionally developing children.

“And we were able to predict ADHD severity using clinical measures of symptom severity,” Lin said. “We believe our study demonstrates the potential clinical utility of neural flexibility to identify children with ADHD, as well as to monitor treatment response and disease severity in individual children.”

Source:

University of North Carolina Health Care

Reference:

Yin, W., et al. (2022) Altered neural flexibility in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Molecular Psychiatry. doi.org/10.1038/s41380-022-01706-4.