TY - JOUR

T1 - The Speed of Visual Attention and Motor-Response Decisions in Adult Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

AU - Cross-Villasana, Fernando

AU - Finke, Kathrin

AU - Hennig-Fast, Kristina

AU - Kilian, Beate

AU - Wiegand, Iris

AU - Müller, Hermann Joseph

AU - Möller, Hans Jürgen

AU - Töllner, Thomas

PY - 2015

Y1 - 2015

N2 - AbstractBackground: Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) exhibit slowed reaction times (RTs) in various attention tasks. The exact origins of this slowing, however, have not been yet established. Potential candidates are early sensory processes mediating the deployment of focal-attention, stimulus-response translation processes deciding upon the appropriate motor-response, and motor processes generating the response.Methods: We combined mental chronometry (RT) measures of adult ADHD (n = 15) and healthy control (n = 15) participants with their lateralized event-related potentials (ERP) during the performance of a visual-search task to differentiate potential sources of slowing at separable levels of processing: the posterior contralateral negativity (PCN) was used to index focalattentional selection times, while the lateralized readiness potentials synchronized to stimulus (sLRP) and response events (rLRP) were used to index the times taken for response selection and production, respectively. To assess the clinical relevance of ERPs, a correlation analysis between neural measures and subjective current and retrospective ADHD symptom ratings was performed.Results: ADHD patients exhibited slower RTs than control participants, which were accompanied by prolonged PCN and sLRP, but not rLRP, latencies. Moreover, the PCN timing was positively correlated with ADHD symptom ratings.Conclusions: The behavioral RT slowing of adult ADHD patients was based on a summation of internal processing delays arising at perceptual and response-selection stages; motor-response production, by contrast, was not impaired. The correlation between PCN times and ADHD

AB - AbstractBackground: Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) exhibit slowed reaction times (RTs) in various attention tasks. The exact origins of this slowing, however, have not been yet established. Potential candidates are early sensory processes mediating the deployment of focal-attention, stimulus-response translation processes deciding upon the appropriate motor-response, and motor processes generating the response.Methods: We combined mental chronometry (RT) measures of adult ADHD (n = 15) and healthy control (n = 15) participants with their lateralized event-related potentials (ERP) during the performance of a visual-search task to differentiate potential sources of slowing at separable levels of processing: the posterior contralateral negativity (PCN) was used to index focalattentional selection times, while the lateralized readiness potentials synchronized to stimulus (sLRP) and response events (rLRP) were used to index the times taken for response selection and production, respectively. To assess the clinical relevance of ERPs, a correlation analysis between neural measures and subjective current and retrospective ADHD symptom ratings was performed.Results: ADHD patients exhibited slower RTs than control participants, which were accompanied by prolonged PCN and sLRP, but not rLRP, latencies. Moreover, the PCN timing was positively correlated with ADHD symptom ratings.Conclusions: The behavioral RT slowing of adult ADHD patients was based on a summation of internal processing delays arising at perceptual and response-selection stages; motor-response production, by contrast, was not impaired. The correlation between PCN times and ADHD

KW - Faculty of Social Sciences

KW - ADHD

KW - Decision-making

KW - Electroencephalography

KW - Neuro-cognitive endophenotypes

KW - Psychophysics

KW - Stimulus-response translation

U2 - 10.1016/j.biopsych.2015.01.016

DO - 10.1016/j.biopsych.2015.01.016

M3 - Journal article

C2 - 25773661

VL - 78

SP - 107

EP - 115

JO - Biological Psychiatry

JF - Biological Psychiatry

SN - 0006-3223

IS - 2

ER -