Diminished prefrontal hemodynamic response in adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: a multi-channel functional near-infrared spectroscopy study

Background and aims

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a common neurodevelopmental disorder. Adult ADHD is currently diagnosed based only on subjective clinical and scoring measures, which inevitably lead to a low correct diagnosis rate. Hence, an effective auxiliary examination with higher sensitivity is needed.

Method

Twenty healthy controls (HC) subjects and 20 adults with ADHD were included in this study. The functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) under verbal fluency test (VFT) was performed to detect cerebral cortex hemodynamics. Correlation and Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis were employed to reveal the relationship between differences in hemodynamic response and clinical characteristics.

Results

The HbO response of adult ADHD in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) was significantly smaller than that of HC. HbO concentration changes in the corresponding channels were negatively correlated with the ASRS-inattention score. HbO concentration changes of channels 16 and 26 corresponding to the medial PFC might be helpful for the diagnosis of adult ADHD.

Conclusion

Adult ADHD patients have low activation of the PFC, changes of whose corresponding channels were significantly associated with attention deficit, indicating that fNIRS under VFT may be an effective auxiliary examination for adult ADHD.