NIH Record - National Institutes of Health

Researchers Find Brain Connections Related to ADHD

Norman in button-down shirt in front of glass wall
Dr. Luke Norman

NIH researchers have discovered that symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are tied to atypical interactions between the brain’s frontal cortex and information-processing centers deep in the brain. The study was led by researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and National Human Genome Research Institute.

Scientists examined more than 10,000 functional brain images of youth with ADHD and published their results in the American Journal of Psychiatry

Dr. Luke Norman, a staff scientist in the NIMH Office of the Clinical Director, and colleagues analyzed brain images supplied by more than 8,000 youth with and without ADHD, sourced from six different functional imaging datasets. Using these images, they examined associations between functional brain connectivity and ADHD symptoms.

They found that youth with ADHD had heightened connectivity between structures deep in the brain involved in learning, movement, reward and emotion (caudate, putamen and nucleus accumbens seeds) and structures in the frontal area of the brain involved in attention and control of unwanted behaviors (superior temporal gyri, insula, inferior parietal lobe and inferior frontal gyri).

While neuroscience researchers have long suspected that ADHD symptoms result from atypical interactions between the frontal cortex and these deep information-processing brain structures, studies testing this model have returned mixed findings, possibly due to the small nature of the studies, with only 100 or so subjects. Researchers suggest these smaller studies may not have been able to reliably detect the brain interactions leading to the complex behaviors seen in ADHD.

Findings from this study help further our understanding of the brain processes contributing to ADHD symptoms—information that can help inform clinically relevant research and advancements.

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Associate Editor: Dana Talesnik
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Assistant Editor: Eric Bock
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Staff Writer: Amber Snyder
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