1. Increased ongoing neural variability in ADHD
- Author
-
Shlomi Haar, Ayelet Arazi, Gil Gonen-Yaacovi, Nachshon Meiran, Nitzan Shahar, Ilan Dinstein, and Anat Karmon
- Subjects
Adult ,Male ,Elementary cognitive task ,medicine.medical_specialty ,Nerve net ,Cognitive Neuroscience ,Experimental and Cognitive Psychology ,Sensory system ,Electroencephalography ,Stimulus (physiology) ,Audiology ,Neuropsychological Tests ,050105 experimental psychology ,Developmental psychology ,03 medical and health sciences ,0302 clinical medicine ,Stimulus modality ,medicine ,Image Processing, Computer-Assisted ,Reaction Time ,Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder ,Humans ,0501 psychology and cognitive sciences ,Attention ,medicine.diagnostic_test ,05 social sciences ,Cognition ,medicine.disease ,Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology ,medicine.anatomical_structure ,Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity ,Female ,Nerve Net ,Psychology ,030217 neurology & neurosurgery ,Psychomotor Performance - Abstract
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) has been described as a disorder where frequent lapses of attention impair the ability of an individual to focus/attend in a sustained manner, thereby generating abnormally large intra-individual behavioral variability across trials. Indeed, increased reaction time (RT) variability is a fundamental behavioral characteristic of individuals with ADHD found across a large number of cognitive tasks. But what is the underlying neurophysiology that might generate such behavioral instability? Here, we examined trial-by-trial EEG response variability to visual and auditory stimuli while subjects' attention was diverted to an unrelated task at the fixation cross. Comparisons between adult ADHD and control participants revealed that neural response variability was significantly larger in the ADHD group as compared with the control group in both sensory modalities. Importantly, larger trial-by-trial variability in ADHD was apparent before and after stimulus presentation as well as in trials where the stimulus was omitted, suggesting that ongoing (rather than stimulus-evoked) neural activity is continuously more variable (noisier) in ADHD. While the patho-physiological mechanisms causing this increased neural variability remain unknown, they appear to act continuously rather than being tied to a specific sensory or cognitive process.
- Published
- 2015