No clear effects of acute tryptophan depletion on processing affective prosody in male adults with ADHD

Abstract

The difficulties male adults with ADHD have in accurately processing affective prosody may result from impairments in their ability to inhibit unwanted stimuli and impulses. No clear evidence implicates 5-HT as a cause of these impairments.

Attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder and the encoding of emotional information

“…The study by Kis et al published in the current edition of the journal extends previous work indicating that adults with ADHD have trouble identifying prosodic affect cues for semantically incongruent statements (5), and helps to clarify that this deficit in not an artefact of problems with executive functioning. In conjunction with the recent paper by Bisch et al (6), it also helps to clarify the nature of integrated multimodal processing of affective-laden social information.…”

“…In their seminal reformulation, Crick and Dodge (3) describe social information processing (SIP) as a cycle of six distinct processes: (i) encoding of cues, (ii) interpretation of cues, (iii) clarification of goals, (iv) response access or construction, (v) response decision, and (vi) behavioural enactment. SIP research has focused predominantly on aggressive children and has shed light on hostile attributions of intent (process ii) and aggressogenic response evaluation and decision-making (RED) processes (4,5). Little attention has been paid to encoding per se and the role of affective information in determining the encoding of social information either with ADHD or neurotypical populations.…”

Resting state default mode network connectivity in children and adolescents with ADHD after acute tryptophan depletion

“…The method of the ATD challenge has been studied, modified, and refined numerous times, reducing side‐effects and maximizing depletion of TRP. The modified mixture used in this particular study, named the ATD Moja‐De challenge, has been safely used in children and adolescents as well as in adults . The Moja‐De procedure has been validated to reduce brain 5‐HT synthesis in both rodents and humans from 90 mins after ingestion until 240 mins .…”

The neurobiological link between OCD and ADHD

“…More recent studies demonstrate an inverse relationship between trait impulsivity and the acute tryptophan depletion effect on reactive aggression after low provocation in patients with adolescent and adult ADHD (Kotting et al 2013; Zimmermann et al 2012). While there seems to be a relationship between acute tryptophan depletion and attentional performance in adult patients with ADHD (Mette et al 2013), there is no such effect on verbal declarative memory in young patients with ADHD (Zepf et al 2013) and on processing affective prosody in male adults with ADHD (Grabemann et al 2013). …”