Event-Related Potentials Correlate with the Severity of Child and Adolescent Patients with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.

BACKGROUND: Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms can continue through adolescence and adulthood, including difficulty in staying focused, paying attention, and controlling behavior, as well as hyperactivity. While children and adolescents with ADHD have functional impairments at multiple dimensions, there are no objective biological indicators to assess the severity of ADHD. Event-related potentials (ERPs) are widely used as a noninvasive method for evaluating sensory and cognitive processes involved in attention tasks. Previous studies have shown that P300 amplitude or latency, a main component in ERPs, is altered in patients with ADHD. However, little is known about the relationship between P300 and the severity of ADHD symptoms. METHOD: We sought to measure both P300 amplitude and latency in ERPs during auditory oddball tasks in 44 patients with ADHD (mean age ± SD 10.28 ± 3.43 years) and 15 age- and gender-matched normally developing children (11.40 ± 3.02 years). In ADHD patients, we also assessed symptom severity using the ADHD rating scale-IV-Japanese version. RESULT: In ADHD groups, P300 amplitude and latency were attenuated and prolonged compared to controls at the frontocentral, centroparietal, and parietal positions. Furthermore, levels of P300 latency at these positions are positively correlated with the inattention subscale scores measured by the ADHD rating scale-IV-Japanese version. CONCLUSIONS: The present study revealed that the degree of P300 latency might reflect the severity of ADHD symptoms with children and adolescents, suggesting that ERPs are a useful technique to evaluate the severity of ADHD symptoms.

Comparison of pervasive developmental disorder and schizophrenia by the Japanese version of the National Adult Reading Test.

OBJECTIVE: In adults, it is sometimes difficult to discriminate between pervasive developmental disorder (PDD) and schizophrenia (SCH) when positive symptoms are not outstanding. We examined whether the Japanese version of the National Adult Reading Test (JART), is a valid scale for evaluating pre-morbid intelligence quotient (IQ) in patients with SCH, and the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R) are useful for helping to discriminate between PDD and SCH. METHODS: Sixteen patients with adult PDD and 16 age-, education- and sex-matched patients with SCH participated in the present study. In addition, two groups were matched for JART and GAF scores. All subjects were scored on the JART and WAIS-R after informed consent on the aim of this study. Examiners who were blind to the diagnoses measured JART and WAIS-R. RESULTS: Significant diagnosis-by-IQ examination interactions were found (F[1,30] = 10.049, P = 0.003). Furthermore, WAIS-R scores of the PDD group were higher than those of the SCH group (P = 0.002) considering two groups were matched for JART. CONCLUSIONS: The comparison of IQ in the PDD group and in the SCH group by JART and WAIS-R might be an easy and useful method for helping to discriminate between PDD and SCH.

Reduced prefrontal hemodynamic response in pediatric obsessive-compulsive disorder as measured by near-infrared spectroscopy.

Recent developments in near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) have enabled non-invasive clarification of brain functions in psychiatric disorders. Functional neuroimaging studies of patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have suggested that the frontal cortex and subcortical structures may play a role in the pathophysiology of the disorder. Twelve treatment-naïve children with OCD and 12 age- and sex-matched healthy control subjects participated in the present study after giving consent. The relative concentrations of oxyhemoglobin (oxy-Hb) were measured with prefrontal probes every 0.1 s during the Stroop color-word task, using 24-channel NIRS machines. During the Stroop color-word task, the oxy-Hb changes in the OCD group were significantly smaller than those in the control group in the prefrontal cortex, especially in the frontopolar cortex. The present study suggests that children with OCD have reduced prefrontal hemodynamic response as measured by NIRS.