| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 腦與心智科學研究所 === 102 === Objective: Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) lasts to adulthood with the evidence of widespread brain abnormalities. Diffusion imaging studies reveal disturbed white matter microstructure integrity in several brain regions in ADHD, such as the frontostriatal circuit, cingulum, superior longitudinal fasciculus, inferior longitudinal fasciculus, etc. As the first study to examine the microstructure integrity using diffusion spectrum imaging (DSI) in adults with ADHD, this study aimed to identify the fiber tracts which can distinguish adults with ADHD and healthy adults.
Method: Sixty-four adults with ADHD aged 28.7 (mean ± standard deviation, SD, 28.7 ± 7.9; male, 54.7%) and eighty-one healthy adults aged 28.4 (28.4 ± 7.9; male, 55.6%), received psychiatric and DSI assessments. After acquisition of the DSI, whole brain tractography was reconstructed by a novel tract-based automatic analysis (TBAA). The participants also reported on ADHD clinical symptoms and received the Conners’ continuous performance test and rapid visual information processing test for the assessment of attention performance. Correlation and regression analyses were conducted.
Results: The most significantly different clusters between healthy adults and adults with ADHD were determined in 15 tracts, located in the fronto-striato-thalamo-cortical circuit, right inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF), right superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF) I, left SLF II, and corpus callosum (parietal, temporal and occipital parts). There were different patterns of the associations of the fiber tracts integrity with CCPT performance between adults with ADHD and healthy adults. In summary, the CCPT indexes were correlated with the integrity of fronto-striatal tracts in adults with ADHD, while the CCPT indexes exhibited correlation with the integrity of thalamus and corpus callosum related tracts in healthy adults. Moreover, higher integrity of the right SLF I and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex to striatum were associated with less hyperactivity/impulsivity symptoms in adults with ADHD.
Conclusions: Using the whole brain TBAA method, we found the tracts with altered white matter microstructure property in adults with ADHD are involved in the fronto-striato-thalamo-cortical circuit, attention network, sensorimotor system, and linguistic system. Moreover, when undertaken attention performance test, different neural correlates were employed. In the ADHD group, the associations existed in the fronto-stiatal tracts, while in healthy adults, the association was uncovered in the thalamus and corpus callosum related tracts.
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