Disrupted response inhibition toward facial anger cues in children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): an event-related potential study

Neural bases of social deficits in ADHD: A systematic review. Does the Theory of Mind matter?

INTRODUCTION

The Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) causes serious interpersonal problems from childhood to adulthood, one of them being problematic social functioning. This phenomenon in ADHD should be associated with impairments in the Theory of Mind (ToM). Therefore, understanding the neural correlates of the ToM could be crucial for helping individuals with ADHD with their social functioning. Thus, we aimed to review published literature concerning neuroanatomical and functional correlates of ToM deficits in children and adolescents with ADHD.

METHODS

We reviewed studies published between 1970 and 2023. In accordance with PRISMA guidelines, after data from three databases were collected, two authors (LN and PM) independently screened all relevant records (n=638) and consequently, both authors did the data extraction. The quality of the included studies (n=5) was measured by a modified version of The Newcastle-Ottawa Scale and by measures specific for our study. This systematic review was registered on PROSPERO (CRD42020139847).

RESULTS

Results indicated that impairments in performing of the ToM tasks were negatively associated with the grey matter volume in the bilateral amygdala and hippocampus in both, ADHD and control group. In EEG studies, a significantly greater electrophysiological activity during ToM tasks was observed in the, frontal, temporal, parietal and occipital lobes in participants with ADHD as compared to healthy subjects.

CONCLUSION

More research is needed to explore the ToM deficits in children with ADHD. Future research might focus on the neural circuits associated with attention and inhibition, which deficits seems to contribute to the ToM deficits in children and adolescents with ADHD.

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) improves emotion regulation in children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)

Children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) typically exhibit difficulties in emotion regulation. It has been shown that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) are crucially involved in these deficient processes. In this study, we aimed to explore the impact of electrical stimulation over the left dlPFC and right vmPFC on emotion regulation in children with ADHD. Twenty-four children with ADHD completed the Emotional Go/No-Go and Emotional 1-Back tasks while undergoing transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) in three separate sessions, each with a different electrode placement: anodal dlPFC (F3)/cathodal vmPFC (Fp2), anodal vmPFC (Fp2)/cathodal dlPFC (F3), and sham stimulation. During both real tDCS conditions, the accuracy of pre-potent inhibitory control and working memory performance improved, but not speed. This study provides evidence that the left dlPFC and the right vmPFC are involved in emotion regulation in ADHD.

A critical review of hot executive functioning in youth attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: Methodological limitations, conceptual considerations, and future directions

Hot executive functioning (EF) - EF under emotionally or motivationally salient conditions - is a putative etiology of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), disruptive behavior problems (DBPs), and their related impairments. Despite two decades of research, the present study is the first review of the construct in youth ADHD, with a particular focus on the role of task design, age, and DBPs, as well as relevant conceptual and methodological considerations. While certain hot EF tasks have been investigated extensively (e.g., choice impulsivity), substantial inconsistency in measurement of the broader construct remains, severely limiting conclusions. Future research should a) consider the extent to which various hot EF tasks relate to one another, a higher order factor, and other related constructs; b) further investigate task design, particularly the elicitation of emotion or motivation and its anticipated effect on EF; and c) incorporate multiple levels of analysis to validate similarities and differences among tasks with regard to the affective experiences and cognitive demands they elicit. With improved measurement and conceptual clarity, hot EF has potential to advance the literature on etiological pathways to ADHD, DBPs and associated impairments and, more broadly, may represent a useful tool for understanding the influence of emotion and motivation on cognition.

Facial expression recognition ability and its neuropsychological mechanisms in children with attention deficit and hyperactive disorder

Attention deficit and hyperactive disorder (ADHD) is a chronic neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by inattention, hyperactivity-impulsivity, and working memory deficits. Social dysfunction is one of the major challenges faced by children with ADHD. It has been found that children with ADHD can't perform as well as typically developing children on facial expression recognition (FER) tasks. Generally, children with ADHD have some difficulties in FER, while some studies suggest that they have no significant differences in accuracy of specific emotion recognition compared with typically developing children. The neuropsychological mechanisms underlying these difficulties are as follows. First, neuroanatomically. Compared to typically developing children, children with ADHD show smaller gray matter volume and surface area in the amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex regions, as well as reduced density and volume of axons/cells in certain frontal white matter fiber tracts. Second, neurophysiologically. Children with ADHD exhibit increased slow-wave activity in their electroencephalogram, and event-related potential studies reveal abnormalities in emotional regulation and responses to angry faces when facing facial stimuli. Third, psychologically. Psychosocial stressors may influence FER abilities in children with ADHD, and sleep deprivation in ADHD children may significantly increase their recognition threshold for negative expressions such as sadness and anger. This article reviews research progress over the past three years on FER abilities of children with ADHD, analyzing the FER deficit in children with ADHD from three dimensions: neuroanatomy, neurophysiology and psychology, aiming to provide new perspectives for further research and clinical treatment of ADHD.

Developmental trajectory of hot and cold executive functions in children with and without attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)

BACKGROUND

Children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have a delayed development. Two main cognitive models of ADHD are executive (cold) and motivational (hot) models. In this study, we aimed to compare the development of hot and cold executive functions in children with and without ADHD.

METHODS AND PROCEDURES

Forty-six children with ADHD symptoms (56% boys) and forty-four typically developing controls (54% boys), in three age groups of 6-8, 8-10 and 10-12 years, were participated in the study. Go/No-Go Task (GNGT), One-Back Test (OBT) and Shifting Attention Test (SAT), Delay Discounting Test (DDT) and Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) were used for assessment.

OUTCOMES AND RESULTS

Children with ADHD showed lower performance in GNG, OBT, SAT, and BART, but intact performance in DDT. The tasks' performance was significantly different between three age groups in GNG and SAT, but similar in OBT and BART. The interaction effect was significant only for the BART measures.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

Children with ADHD compared to typically developing children, experience impaired hot and cold executive functions. The cognitive delay was found only in risky decision making as a hot executive function.

The Effects of Cognitive-Affective Switching With Unpredictable Cues in Adults and Adolescents and Their Relation to "Cool" Executive Functioning and Emotion Regulation

The impact of emotion on executive functioning is gaining interest. It has led to the differentiation of "cool" Executive Functioning (EF) processes, such as cognitive flexibility, and "hot" EF processes, such as affective flexibility. But how does affective flexibility, the ability to switch between cognitive and affective information, vary as a function of age and sex? How does this construct relate to "cool" executive functioning and cognitive-emotion regulation processes? In this study, 266 participants, including 91 adolescents (M = 16.08, SD = 1.42 years old) and 175 adults (M = 25.69, SD = 2.17 years old), completed a cognitive-affective switching task with specific (as opposed to general) unpredictable switches, as well as measures of inhibition, attention, and cognitive-emotion coping strategies. We expected cognitive to affective switching to be more costly than affective to cognitive switching in females versus males, as well as higher switch costs in adolescents. Using linear mixed modelling, we analysed the effect of age, sex, and types of switching on reaction time. Results show that adolescents are slower switchers than adults, and demonstrate that females, although faster switchers than males, are slower when switching from cognitive to affective content than when they are switching from affective to cognitive content. Multiple regression analyses revealed age-specific associations between cognitive-affective switching and inhibition. These results converge with reported developmental and gender specificities in EF and emotion processing, respectively. Additionally, affective flexibility could relate to differences in vigilance and inhibition.

The Differential Effect of Anxiety and ADHD Symptoms on Inhibitory Control and Sustained Attention for Threat Stimuli: A Go/No-Go Eye-Movement Study

Objective: This study examined the synergistic effects of ADHD and anxiety symptoms on attention and inhibitory control depending on the emotional content of the stimuli. Method: Fifty-four typically developing individuals (27 children/adolescents and 27 adults) completed an eye-movement based emotional Go/No-Go task, using centrally presented (happy, angry) faces and neutral/symbolic stimuli. Sustained attention was measured through saccade latencies and saccadic omission errors (Go trials), and inhibitory control through saccadic commission errors (No-Go trials). ADHD and anxiety were assessed dimensionally. Results: Elevated ADHD symptoms were associated with more commission errors and slower saccade latencies for angry (vs. happy) faces. In contrast, angry faces were linked to faster saccade onsets when anxiety symptoms were high, and this effect prevailed when both anxiety and ADHD symptoms were high. Conclusion: Social threat impacted performance in individuals with sub-clinical anxiety and ADHD differently. The effects of anxiety on threat processing prevailed when both symptoms were high.

The effects of sleep deprivation on the processing of emotional facial expressions in young adults with and without ADHD

The ability to recognize emotions from facial expressions is essential to the development of complex social cognition behaviors, and impairments in this ability are associated with poor social competence. This study aimed to examine the effects of sleep deprivation on the processing of emotional facial expressions and nonfacial stimuli in young adults with and without attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Thirty-five men (mean age 25.4) with (n = 19) and without (n = 16) ADHD participated in the study. During the five days preceding the experimental session, the participants were required to sleep at least seven hours per night (23:00/24:00–7:00/9:00) and their sleep was monitored via actigraphy. On the morning of the experimental session, the participants completed a 4-stimulus visual oddball task combining facial and nonfacial stimuli, and repeated it after 25 h of sustained wakefulness. At baseline, both study groups had poorer performance in response to facial rather than non-facial target stimuli on all indices of the oddball task, with no differences between the groups. Following sleep deprivation, rates of omission errors, commission errors and reaction time variability increased significantly in the ADHD group but not in the control group. Time and target type (face/non-face) did not have an interactive effect on any indices of the oddball task. Young adults with ADHD are more sensitive to the negative effects of sleep deprivation on attentional processes, including those related to the processing of emotional facial expressions. As poor sleep and excessive daytime sleepiness are common in individuals with ADHD, it is feasible that poor sleep quality and quantity play an important role in cognitive functioning deficits, including the processing of emotional facial expressions that are associated with ADHD.

The Effect of Sleep Deprivation on Recognition of Ambiguous Emotional Facial Expressions in Individuals With ADHD

Objective: The present study sought to investigate whether young adults with ADHD have more difficulty recognizing emotional facial expressions compared with young adults without ADHD, and whether such a difference worsens following sleep deprivation. Method: Thirty-one young men (M = 25.6) with (n = 15) or without (n = 16) a diagnosis of ADHD were included in this study. The participants were instructed to sleep 7 hr or more each night for one week, and their sleep quality was monitored via actigraph. Subsequently, the participants were kept awake in a controlled environment for 30 hr. The participants completed a visual emotional morph task twice-at the beginning and at the end of this period. The task included presentation of interpolated face stimuli ranging from neutral facial expressions to fully emotional facial expressions of anger, sadness, or happiness, allowing for assessment of the intensity threshold for recognizing these facial emotional expressions. Results: Actigraphy data demonstrated that while the nightly sleep duration of the participants with ADHD was similar to that of participants without ADHD, their sleep efficiency was poorer. At the onset of the experiment, there were no differences in recognition thresholds between the participants with ADHD and those without ADHD. Following sleep deprivation, however, the ADHD group required clearer facial expressions to recognize the presence of angry, sad, and, to a lesser extent, happy faces. Conclusion: Among young adults with ADHD, sleep deprivation may hinder the processing of emotional facial stimuli.

Neural Correlates of Emotion Reactivity and Regulation in Young Children with ADHD Symptoms

Emotion reactivity and regulation are frequently impaired in individuals with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), yet few studies have examined these factors in young children with ADHD, and none have explored the neural correlates of emotion reactivity and regulation in this group through event-related potentials (ERPs). Children aged 4 to 7 with (n = 25; 18 boys) and without (n = 29; 20 boys) ADHD symptoms completed an attention task composed of four blocks: baseline, frustration, suppression, and recovery. In the frustration and suppression blocks, negative affect was induced by false negative feedback. During the suppression block, children were asked to suppress emotional expressions. Neural reactivity, assessed via the N2 and P3 components, suggests that children with ADHD symptoms processed the emotional induction differently than typically developing (TD) children. TD children demonstrated decreased N2 and increased P3 amplitudes at frontal and frontocentral regions across task conditions whereas children with ADHD symptoms showed relatively stable N2 and P3 amplitudes. This pattern suggests that young children with ADHD symptoms are not as effective as their TD peers in modulating attention allocation and cognitive control in emotionally laden situations. The present study underscores that emotional contexts may exacerbate attentional control deficits in young children with ADHD symptoms.

Electrophysiological evidence of an attentional bias towards appetitive and aversive words in adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder

OBJECTIVE

Emotional dysregulation has emerged as a core symptom domain in adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). However, the pathophysiological underpinnings remain poorly understood. This study investigated attentional biases to positive and negative emotional words as possible contributing mechanisms.

METHODS

Event-related potentials (ERPSs) and behavioral attention bias indices were recorded from 39 adult patients with ADHD and 41 healthy controls during a verbal dot-probe task with positive-neutral, negative-neutral, and neutral-neutral word pairs.

RESULTS

Cue-locked N2pc amplitudes indicated a significant attentional bias towards emotional words in patients with ADHD and healthy controls. In healthy controls, the bias was only significant in positive trials. In patients, the bias was associated with ADHD severity and self-reported poor emotion regulation skills. ADHD patients also exhibited reduced target-locked P1 amplitudes and inferior behavioral performance compared with healthy controls.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings provide evidence of an attention bias to positive and negative emotional stimuli in adult patients with ADHD and adverse effects of emotional stimuli on task performance.

SIGNIFICANCE

An attentional bias to emotional stimuli might contribute to emotional reactivity and dysregulation in adult patients with ADHD.

Lisdexamfetamine Targets Amygdala Mechanisms That Bias Cognitive Control in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

BACKGROUND

Prefrontal-limbic circuits that form the neural architecture for emotion to influence behavior have been implicated in the pathophysiology of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and represent a potentially important target of medication treatment that has not been substantively evaluated. This study tested the effect of the psychostimulant prodrug lisdexamfetamine dimesylate on amygdala activation and connectivity during the emotional bias of response execution and inhibition.

METHODS

Twenty-five adults with ADHD were scanned twice with event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging while performing an emotional go/no-go task after 3 to 4 weeks of lisdexamfetamine treatment and 3 weeks off medication in a randomized, counterbalanced, hybrid crossover design. Drug, trial type, and face emotion (happy, sad, or neutral) were included as within-subjects factors in repeated measures analyses of activation and connectivity.

RESULTS

Lisdexamfetamine was associated with increased right amygdala activation and reduced psychophysiological interactions with the orbital aspect of the left inferior frontal gyrus specifically for responses to sad faces compared with placebo, but there was no effect on the accuracy of response execution or inhibition. The relative gain in right amygdala activation in response to sad faces for lisdexamfetamine was correlated with a reduction in symptoms of ADHD.

CONCLUSIONS

Treatment with lisdexamfetamine potentiates affective encoding in amygdala, purportedly via catecholaminergic mechanisms, but functionally disconnects the amygdala from inferior frontal regions that encode behavioral significance-resulting in reduced emotional bias of cognitive control. Pinpointing the neurophysiologic underpinnings of therapeutic improvement with lisdexamfetamine represents a first step in developing targeted approaches to treatment of ADHD.

Face memory and face recognition in children and adolescents with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: A systematic review

This review focuses on facial recognition abilities in children and adolescents with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). A systematic review, using PRISMA guidelines, was conducted to identify original articles published prior to May 2017 pertaining to memory, face recognition, affect recognition, facial expression recognition and recall of faces in children and adolescents with ADHD. The qualitative synthesis based on different studies shows a particular focus of the research on facial affect recognition without paying similar attention to the structural encoding of facial recognition. In this review, we further investigate facial recognition abilities in children and adolescents with ADHD, providing synthesis of the results observed in the literature, while detecting face recognition tasks used on face processing abilities in ADHD and identifying aspects not yet explored.

The relationship between early and late event-related potentials and temperament in adolescents with and without ADHD

Differences in emotional processing are prevalent in adolescents with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and are related to clinical impairment, but substantial heterogeneity exists. Within ADHD, some individuals experience difficulty with positive/approach emotions, negative/withdrawal emotions, or both. These problems may reflect differences in emotional reactivity, emotion regulation, or a combination, and the neurophysiological correlates remain unclear. Event-related potentials were collected from 109 adolescents (49 with ADHD) while they completed an emotional go/no-go task with three conditions: happy (positive/approach), fear (negative/withdrawal), and neutral. The P1 and N170 were used as a marker of early emotional processing and the P3b and late positive potential (LPP) were used as markers of later elaborative emotional processing. Emotional response style was assessed with parent and adolescent report on the Early Adolescent Temperament Questionnaire. There were no effects of emotion or group for the P1. Typically-developing adolescents exhibited a larger N170 to emotional vs. neutral faces while adolescents with ADHD showed the opposite pattern. All adolescents exhibited a larger P3b to fearful versus other faces and a larger LPP to emotional vs. non-emotional faces. Within the ADHD group, N170 responses to happy faces predicted parent ratings of positive/approach emotions. Findings highlight the importance of considering within-group heterogeneity when studying clinical populations and help clarify the time-locked neurophysiological correlates of emotion dysregulation.

To make a molehill out of a mountain: An ERP-study on cognitive reappraisal of negative pictures in children with and without ADHD

OBJECTIVE

We investigated cognitive reappraisal in children with ADHD by means of the late positive potential (LPP) and self-report ratings. We expected diminished LPP modulation following reappraisal and lower self-report scores in children with ADHD.

METHODS

Eighteen children with ADHD and 24 typically developing (TD) children (8-12years) performed a cognitive reappraisal task, while EEG was recorded, and filled out a questionnaire on cognitive reappraisal.

RESULTS

Despite the lack of main reappraisal effects on LPP, the LPP was less positively modulated during reappraisal in ADHD compared to TD children.

CONCLUSIONS

Children with ADHD reported less use of reappraisal and could be distinguished from TD children based on LPP modulation. However the lack of main effects of reappraisal on LPP in both groups hinders clear interpretation of this finding and questions the suitability of LPP modulation within the current paradigm as a neural index of reappraisal in children 8-12years old, and warrants further research on the inter-individual variability and sensitivity of LPP modulation as a neural index of emotion regulation in children.

SIGNIFICANCE

This is the first study investigating the LPP during cognitive reappraisal in children with ADHD.

Hot executive control and response to a stimulant in a double-blind randomized trial in children with ADHD

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is thought to involve an executive inhibitory control (IC) deficit, yet it is not clear if this is a general deficit affecting both cold and hot EC, and if methylphenidate (MPH) affects both systems in treated children. We explored this by using a Stroop-like task in children with ADHD as compared to controls, containing different types of emotional stimuli (six levels), and we investigated the role of intervention with MPH on IC as compared to placebo. Children with ADHD and controls (N = 40; 7-13 years old) were tested with a hot and cold Stroop-like task. This was followed by a double-blind placebo-controlled crossover trial of the effect of MPH on these skills. Children with ADHD showed a specific difficulty inhibiting their responses, particularly to hot, angry and frustration-inducing stimuli. Further, treatment with MPH was effective in reducing errors toward frustration-inducing stimuli as compared to placebo (p < .05, η ² = .347), particularly with repeated exposure to the stimuli. Results indicate that children with ADHD experience executive control difficulties, particularly in hot negative emotional contexts. These emotion regulation difficulties are amenable to stimulant intervention.

Deficits in Response Inhibition in Patients with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: The Impaired Self-Protection System Hypothesis

Problems in inhibitory control are regarded in Psychology as a key problem associated with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). They, however, might not be primary deficits, but instead a consequence of inattention. At least two components have been identified and dissociated in studies in regards to inhibitory control: interference suppression, responsible for controlling interference by resisting irrelevant or misleading information, and response inhibition, referring to withholding a response or overriding an ongoing behavior. Poor error awareness and self-monitoring undermine an individual's ability to inhibit inadequate responses and change course of action. In non-social contexts, an individual depends on his own cognition to regulate his mistakes. In social contexts, however, there are many social cues that should help that individual to perceive his mistakes and inhibit inadequate responses. The processes involved in perceiving and interpreting those social cues are arguably part of a self-protection system (SPS). Individuals with ADHD not only present impulsive behaviors in social contexts, but also have difficulty perceiving their inadequate responses and overriding ongoing actions toward more appropriate ones. In this paper, we discuss that those difficulties are arguably a consequence of an impaired SPS, due to visual attention deficits and subsequent failure in perceiving and recognizing accurately negative emotions in facial expressions, especially anger. We discuss evidence that children with ADHD exhibit problems in a series of components involved in the activation of that system and advocate that the inability to identify the anger expressed by others, and thus, not experiencing the fear response that should follow, is, ultimately, what prevents them from inhibiting the ongoing inappropriate behavior, since a potential threat is not registered. Getting involved in high-risk situations, such as reckless driving, could also be a consequence of not registering a threat and thus, not experiencing fear.

Event-Related Potentials and Emotion Processing in Child Psychopathology

In recent years there has been increasing interest in the neural mechanisms underlying altered emotional processes in children and adolescents with psychopathology. This review provides a brief overview of the most up-to-date findings in the field of event-related potentials (ERPs) to facial and vocal emotional expressions in the most common child psychopathological conditions. In regards to externalizing behavior (i.e., ADHD, CD), ERP studies show enhanced early components to anger, reflecting enhanced sensory processing, followed by reductions in later components to anger, reflecting reduced cognitive-evaluative processing. In regards to internalizing behavior, research supports models of increased processing of threat stimuli especially at later more elaborate and effortful stages. Finally, in autism spectrum disorders abnormalities have been observed at early visual-perceptual stages of processing. An affective neuroscience framework for understanding child psychopathology can be valuable in elucidating underlying mechanisms and inform preventive intervention.

Meta-analysis of social cognition in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): comparison with healthy controls and autistic spectrum disorder

BACKGROUND

Impairment in social cognition is an established finding in autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Emerging evidence suggests that attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) might be also associated with deficits in theory of mind (ToM) and emotion recognition. However, there are inconsistent findings, and it has been debatable whether such deficits persist beyond childhood and how similar social cognitive deficits are in ADHD v. ASD.

METHOD

We conducted a meta-analysis of social cognition, including emotion recognition and ToM, studies in ADHD compared with healthy controls and ASD. The current meta-analysis involved 44 studies comparing ADHD (n = 1999) with healthy controls (n = 1725) and 17 studies comparing ADHD (n = 772) with ASD (n = 710).

RESULTS

Facial and vocal emotion recognition (d = 0.40-0.44) and ToM (d = 0.43) abilities were significantly impaired in ADHD. The most robust facial emotion recognition deficits were evident in anger and fear. Social cognitive deficits were either very subtle (emotion recognition) or non-significant (ToM) in adults with ADHD. Deficits in social cognition, especially ToM, were significantly more pronounced in ASD compared with ADHD. General cognitive impairment has contributed to social cognitive deficits in ADHD.

CONCLUSIONS

Performance of individuals with ADHD on social cognition lies intermediate between ASD and healthy controls. However, developmental trajectories of social cognition probably differ between ADHD and ASD as social cognitive deficits in ADHD might be improving with age in most individuals. There is a need for studies investigating a potential subtype of ADHD with persistent social cognitive deficits and exploring longitudinal changes in social cognition during development.

"Turning down the heat": Is poor performance of children with ADHD on tasks tapping "hot" emotional regulation caused by deficits in "cool" executive functions?

Emotional dysregulation in daily life is very common in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). It is however not clear whether this reflects a specific deficit or that it may be the result of generic executive function (EF) deficits. The current study addresses this question by means of an emotional working memory (WM) task with 2 memory load conditions and four possible backgrounds (blank screen, neutral, positive or negative picture), which was administered to 38 typically developing children and 29 children with ADHD. Children responded slower on trials when negative pictures were presented at the background versus when neutral pictures were presented, indicating an emotional interference effect; however crucially, groups did not differ in this respect. Reaction times were also slower on trials with a neutral picture as background versus trials without a picture, with children with ADHD showing an enhanced interference effect. There was a main effect of WM load on performance, but it did not interact with interference or group effects. To summarize, the findings indicate a generic interference control deficit in the children with ADHD in the current sample, while they could not provide support for an emotional interference deficit.

Face-n-Food: Gender Differences in Tuning to Faces

Faces represent valuable signals for social cognition and non-verbal communication. A wealth of research indicates that women tend to excel in recognition of facial expressions. However, it remains unclear whether females are better tuned to faces. We presented healthy adult females and males with a set of newly created food-plate images resembling faces (slightly bordering on the Giuseppe Arcimboldo style). In a spontaneous recognition task, participants were shown a set of images in a predetermined order from the least to most resembling a face. Females not only more readily recognized the images as a face (they reported resembling a face on images, on which males still did not), but gave on overall more face responses. The findings are discussed in the light of gender differences in deficient face perception. As most neuropsychiatric, neurodevelopmental and psychosomatic disorders characterized by social brain abnormalities are sex specific, the task may serve as a valuable tool for uncovering impairments in visual face processing.

Atypical neural responses to vocal anger in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder

BACKGROUND

Deficits in facial emotion processing, reported in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), have been linked to both early perceptual and later attentional components of event-related potentials (ERPs). However, the neural underpinnings of vocal emotion processing deficits in ADHD have yet to be characterised. Here, we report the first ERP study of vocal affective prosody processing in ADHD.

METHODS

Event-related potentials of 6-11-year-old children with ADHD (n = 25) and typically developing controls (n = 25) were recorded as they completed a task measuring recognition of vocal prosodic stimuli (angry, happy and neutral). Audiometric assessments were conducted to screen for hearing impairments.

RESULTS

Children with ADHD were less accurate than controls at recognising vocal anger. Relative to controls, they displayed enhanced N100 and attenuated P300 components to vocal anger. The P300 effect was reduced, but remained significant, after controlling for N100 effects by rebaselining. Only the N100 effect was significant when children with ADHD and comorbid conduct disorder (n = 10) were excluded.

CONCLUSION

This study provides the first evidence linking ADHD to atypical neural activity during the early perceptual stages of vocal anger processing. These effects may reflect preattentive hyper-vigilance to vocal anger in ADHD.

Processing of affective prosody in boys suffering from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: A near-infrared spectroscopy study

Neurobiological studies on facial affect recognition have demonstrated reduced response amplitudes to anger cues in patients suffering from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). It is still unclear whether a similar deficit exists in the auditory domain. Therefore, this near-infrared spectroscopy study focused on neuronal correlates of affective prosody processing. Fourteen boys suffering from ADHD and fourteen healthy boys were exposed to emotionally intoned, standardized sentences of the categories anger, sadness, happiness, and to affectively neutral sentences. Relative to controls, the patients displayed a diminished activation of the right superior temporal gyrus (STG) when processing anger prosody, which was correlated with aggressive behavior. There were no group differences for the other emotions. Additionally, the ADHD group showed increased supramarginal gyrus (SMG) activation in the anger condition. This might mirror compensatory attention allocation. In summary, we identified a selectively lowered STG activation to auditory anger cues in ADHD patients. Consequently, STG recruitment during anger exposure might be used for evaluation of psychotherapy effects.

Emotional bias of cognitive control in adults with childhood attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder

Affect recognition deficits found in individuals with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) across the lifespan may bias the development of cognitive control processes implicated in the pathophysiology of the disorder. This study aimed to determine the mechanism through which facial expressions influence cognitive control in young adults diagnosed with ADHD in childhood. Fourteen probands with childhood ADHD and 14 comparison subjects with no history of ADHD were scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging while performing a face emotion go/no-go task. Event-related analyses contrasted activation and functional connectivity for cognitive control collapsed over face valence and tested for variations in activation for response execution and inhibition as a function of face valence. Probands with childhood ADHD made fewer correct responses and inhibitions overall than comparison subjects, but demonstrated comparable effects of face emotion on response execution and inhibition. The two groups showed similar frontotemporal activation for cognitive control collapsed across face valence, but differed in the functional connectivity of the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, with fewer interactions with the subgenual cingulate cortex, inferior frontal gyrus, and putamen in probands than in comparison subjects. Further, valence-dependent activation for response execution was seen in the amygdala, ventral striatum, subgenual cingulate cortex, and orbitofrontal cortex in comparison subjects but not in probands. The findings point to functional anomalies in limbic networks for both the valence-dependent biasing of cognitive control and the valence-independent cognitive control of face emotion processing in probands with childhood ADHD. This limbic dysfunction could impact cognitive control in emotional contexts and may contribute to the social and emotional problems associated with ADHD.

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We tested adult probands diagnosed with ADHD in childhood and comparison subjects.

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Emotional bias of cognitive control was modeled with a face emotion go/no-go task.

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Probands made fewer correct responses and correct inhibitions on the go/no-go task.

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Probands showed reduced prefrontal connectivity with limbic and paralimbic regions.

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Probands showed no valence-dependent limbic activation for cognitive control.