Abstract
Numerous studies indicate that attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is related to some developmental trends, as its symptoms change widely over time. Nevertheless, the etiology of this phenomenon remains ambiguous. There is a disagreement whether ADHD is related to deviations in brain development or to a delay in brain maturation. The model of deviated brain development suggests that the ADHD brain matures in a fundamentally different way, and does not reach normal maturity at any developmental stage. On the contrary, the delayed brain maturation model assumes that the ADHD brain indeed matures in a different, delayed way in comparison to healthy age-matched controls, yet eventually reaches proper maturation. We investigated age-related changes in resting-state EEG activity to find evidence to support one of the alternative models. A total of 141 children and teenagers participated in the study; 67 diagnosed with ADHD and 74 healthy controls. The absolute power of delta, theta, alpha, and beta frequency bands was analyzed. We observed a significant developmental pattern of decreasing absolute EEG power in both groups. Nonetheless, ADHD was characterized by consistently lower absolute EGG power, mostly in the theta frequency band, in comparison to healthy controls. Our results are in line with the deviant brain maturation theory of ADHD, as the observed effects of age-related changes in EEG power are parallel but different in the two groups.
Highlights
Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is one of the most commonly diagnosed neurodevelopmental disorders, with reported prevalence rates of 3–7% in school-aged children (Scahill and Schwab-Stone, 2000; Burd et al, 2003; Polanczyk and Jensen, 2008)
The diagnostic process was conducted at the clinic by a trained and experienced team of child psychiatrists and psychologists as previously described (Hancet al., 2014; Racicka et al, 2015), and included: an interview with patients’ parents, Diagnostic Structured Interview for ADHD and Hyperkinetic Disorder according to ICD-10 and DSM-IV TR (Wolanczyk and Kołakowski, 2005), the Behavioral Disorders Supplement of Diagnostic Interview Kiddie-SADS-Present and Lifetime Version (Kiddie-SADS-PL), and observation of patients’ behavior
None of the regression models estimated for all participants revealed a significant interaction effect of Age and ADHD diagnosis
Summary
Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is one of the most commonly diagnosed neurodevelopmental disorders, with reported prevalence rates of 3–7% in school-aged children (Scahill and Schwab-Stone, 2000; Burd et al, 2003; Polanczyk and Jensen, 2008). A growing body of research on the causes of behavioral symptoms in ADHD provides evidence for impairments on genetic, neurotransmission, neuroanatomic and functional levels (for review see, Kuntsi et al, 2006), the etiology still remains unknown. As the deficits observed in ADHD may be diverse, it is regarded as a heterogeneous, multidimensional disorder, and may have multiple causes. There is a disagreement whether ADHD is related to a delay in brain maturation (Mann et al, 1992; Rubia, 2007; Shaw et al, 2007) or whether ADHD’s brain maturation process represents complete deviation from the typical development (Chabot and Serfontein, 1996; Dickstein et al, 2006)
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