Behavioral and Cognitive Impacts of Mindfulness-Based Interventions on Adults with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: A Systematic Review.

Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) are becoming increasingly popular as treatments for physical and psychological problems. Recently, several studies have suggested that MBIs may also be effective in reducing symptoms of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Most studies have examined the effectiveness in children, but there are now a sufficient number of individual treatment trials to consider a systematic review in adults. Majority of existing systematic reviews and meta-analyses only consider ADHD symptoms as an outcome, and most of them do not fully report potential biases of included studies, thus limiting considerably their conclusions. This is an important facet because some studies could be found ineligible to be included in future analysis due to their low quality. In this systematic review, we followed the PRISMA/PICO criteria and we thoroughly assessed the risks of bias for each of the selected studies according to Cochrane guidelines. We searched the available literature concerning MBIs in adult participants with ADHD using PsycINFO, PubMed, Scopus, and ERIC databases. In total, 13 studies conducted with 753 adults (mean age of 35.1 years) were identified as eligible. Potential moderators such as participants' age, ADHD subtypes, medication status, comorbidity, intervention length, mindfulness techniques, homework amount, and training of therapists were carefully described. Aside from measuring the symptoms of ADHD, outcome measures were categorized into executive/cognitive functioning, emotional disturbances, quality of life, mindfulness, and grade point average at school. According to presented descriptive results, all the studies (100%) showed improvement of ADHD symptoms. In addition, mindfulness meditation training improves some aspects of executive function and emotion dysregulation. Although these are promising findings to support treatment efficacy of MBIs for ADHD, various biases such as absence of randomization and lack of a control group may affect the actual clinical value and implications of the studies. Moreover, the relatively low quality of selection and performance criteria in several studies, as well as relatively high attrition bias across studies, call for caution before considering conducting further analysis.

Atypical Activations of Fronto-Cerebellar Regions During Forethought in Parents of Children With ADHD.

OBJECTIVE: Although several studies suggest heritability of ADHD, only a few investigations of possible associations between people at risk and neural abnormalities in ADHD exist. In this study, we tested whether parents of children with ADHD would show atypical patterns of cerebral activations during forethought, a feature of working memory. METHOD: Using Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), we compared 12 parents of children with ADHD and 9 parents of control children during a forethought task. RESULTS: Parents of children with ADHD exhibited significantly increased neural activations in the posterior lobes of the cerebellum and in the left inferior frontal gyrus, relative to parents of control children. CONCLUSION: These findings are consistent with previous reports in children and suggest the fronto-cerebellar circuit's abnormalities during forethought in parents of children with ADHD. Future studies of people at risk of ADHD are needed to fully understand the extent of the fronto-cerebellar heritability.

Intergenerational transmission of fronto-parietal dysfunction during forethought in attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder: a pilot study.

There are only a few published reports of neural abnormalities within the families of children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to compare cerebral activation of ADHD and control biological parent-child dyads during forethought, a prospective function of working memory. Reduced activations in ADHD dyads were found in the inferior frontal gyrus, right superior parietal lobule and left inferior parietal lobule. This suggests that fronto-parietal abnormalities are shared within ADHD families.

Neural correlates of forethought in ADHD.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of the present investigation was to delineate the neural correlates of forethought in the ADHD children relative to typically developing (TD) children. METHOD: In all, 21 TD and 23 ADHD adolescents underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while performing a forethought task. The participants had to identify congruent and incongruent stimuli from cartoon stories representing sequences of action. RESULTS: The findings revealed significantly greater activation in the bilateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) in TD versus ADHD children, and more activation in the cerebellar vermis in the adolescents with ADHD versus TD, during performance of the incongruent relative to congruent condition. CONCLUSION: The inverse pattern of activation of the PFC and the cerebellar vermis in both groups could reflect a compensatory role played by the cerebellum or suggest the malfunction of the neural network between those regions in ADHD. Further research of the neural correlates of forethought in ADHD is warranted.

Processing of musical structure by high-functioning adolescents with autism spectrum disorders.

Enhanced pitch perception and memory have been cited as evidence of a local processing bias in autism spectrum disorders (ASD). This bias is argued to account for enhanced perceptual functioning ( Mottron & Burack, 2001 ; Mottron, Dawson, Soulières, Hubert, & Burack, 2006 ) and central coherence theories of ASD ( Frith, 1989 ; Happé & Frith, 2006 ). A local processing bias confers a different cognitive style to individuals with ASD ( Happé, 1999 ), which accounts in part for their good visuospatial and visuoconstructive skills. Here, we present analogues in the auditory domain, audiotemporal or audioconstructive processing, which we assess using a novel experimental task: a musical puzzle. This task evaluates the ability of individuals with ASD to process temporal sequences of musical events as well as various elements of musical structure and thus indexes their ability to employ a global processing style. Musical structures created and replicated by children and adolescents with ASD (10-19 years old) and typically developing children and adolescents (7-17 years old) were found to be similar in global coherence. Presenting a musical template for reference increased accuracy equally for both groups, with performance associated to performance IQ and short-term auditory memory. The overall pattern of performance was similar for both groups; some puzzles were easier than others and this was the case for both groups. Task performance was further found to be correlated with the ability to perceive musical emotions, more so for typically developing participants. Findings are discussed in light of the empathizing-systemizing theory of ASD ( Baron-Cohen, 2009 ) and the importance of describing the strengths of individuals with ASD ( Happé, 1999 ; Heaton, 2009 ).

[Not Available]. / Facteurs de risque dans le trouble déficitaire de l'attention et de l'hyperactivité: étude familiale.

OBJECTIVE: This study aims at examining risk factors associated with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) such as comorbidities and adversity factors in members of a family with ADHD. METHODS: 137 parents of 104 children with ADHD and 40 parents of 34 typically developing (TD) children filled a questionnaire. Chi-square tests and Student tests measured the association between each group and items of the questionnaire as well as the differences between the groups. RESULTS: Statistical analysis revealed overall decreased academic performances in children with ADHD compared to the TD children. Furthermore, ADHD was substantially more associated with learning, conduct, anxiety and oppositional disorders relative to TD children. Learning difficulties were more frequently reported by fathers of children with ADHD. Mothers of children with ADHD suffered more from depression and anxious disorder and were taking more medication than their TD correspondents. CONCLUSION: The results revealed a link between parents and children, namely depression and anxious disorder in mothers and learning difficulties in fathers of children with ADHD, suggesting a familial component to the disorder. The low report of ADHD diagnosis in fathers of children with ADHD is discussed.

Emotion perception in music in high-functioning adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders.

Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) succeed at a range of musical tasks. The ability to recognize musical emotion as belonging to one of four categories (happy, sad, scared or peaceful) was assessed in high-functioning adolescents with ASD (N = 26) and adolescents with typical development (TD, N = 26) with comparable performance IQ, auditory working memory, and musical training and experience. When verbal IQ was controlled for, there was no significant effect of diagnostic group. Adolescents with ASD rated the intensity of the emotions similarly to adolescents with TD and reported greater confidence in their responses when they had correctly (vs. incorrectly) recognized the emotions. These findings are reviewed within the context of the amygdala theory of autism.

A verbal planning impairment in adult ADHD indexed by script generation tasks.

OBJECTIVE: Though juvenile and adult ADHD cases are well known to have a nonverbal planning impairment, a verbal-planning impairment has been demonstrated only in juvenile ADHD. The purpose of this investigation is to determine whether a verbal planning impairment also characterizes adult ADHD. METHODS: A cohort of 30 adult ADHD clients of a university psychological clinic are compared to 30 age-, education-, gender-, and IQ-matched persons recruited from the general population who did not have ADHD. The dependent measure is a set of 6 paper/pencil 10-item script generation tasks. RESULTS: The findings reveal that the ADHD cohort was significantly impaired on the script task and the script task correlated significantly with severity of ADHD (CAARS index + WURS), whereas several neuropsychological measures of executive function (Stroop, COWA, Rey's Complex Figure, D2, CVLT, CPT-II) did not. Findings further showed that the script measure was weakly correlated with the other established neuropsychological measures of executive function (r < .46, shared variance of less than 21%). CONCLUSIONS: On the basis of the study findings, it is concluded that verbal planning measured with script generation tasks is distinctly impaired in clinically referred adult ADHD.

[Risk factors in families of children with disorder attention deficit/hyperactivity: Quebec data]. / Facteurs de risque chez les familles d'enfants présentant un trouble déficitaire de l'attention/hyperactivité: Données québécoises.

INTRODUCTION: This paper focuses on Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and links with other disorders in the child and his/her parents. Adversity factors are presented around the family life and their impact on ADHD. Families who have a child with ADHD are compared to families who do not. METHOD: The parents in 82 families filled in the QFR-ADHD questionnaire: 24 children without ADHD (control group) and 58 children with ADHD (ADHD group). The children were between 5 and 21 years of age (average age: 10 years) with an average education of 1 to 14 years (average: 4th year of elementary school). The subjects were distributed as follows: 9 boys and 15 girls (control group), and 48 boys and 10 girls (TDA/H group). RESULTS: Oppositional disorder (OD), conduct disorders (CD) and learning disabilities (LD) were significantly more frequent in the ADHD group than in the control group. We found that the mothers of children with ADHD take more selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors than the mothers of children in the control group. This implies that the former experience depressive symptoms. Fathers of children with ADHD had more learning disabilities than the fathers in the control group. CONCLUSION: This research is in line with work on the etiology of ADHD. Investigation of the causes for ADHD is complex, as the disorder has both physical and psychological aspects.