Brain arousal regulation and depressive symptomatology in adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)

Abstract

Background The aim of the present study was to evaluate the stability of brain arousal in adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) outpatients with and without depressive symptomatology, and its association with depressive symptom severity and absolute electroencephalogram (EEG) power in different frequency bands. Methods We included 31 outpatient adults (45.16% females), who were diagnosed according to DSM-IV and received no medication. Their arousal stability score (index of the steepness of arousal decline during a 15-min EEG under resting conditions), the absolute EEG power and self-reports, including depressive and ADHD-related symptoms, were analyzed. Participants were split into an unstable and stable arousal group based on the median (= 6) of the arousal stability score. Results ADHD patients in the stable group reported more severe depressive symptoms ( p = 0.018) and showed reduced absolute EEG power in the delta (0.002 ≤ p ≤ 0.025) and theta (0.011 ≤ p ≤ 0.034) bands compared to those in the unstable group. There was no correlation between the arousal stability score and self-report-scales concerning ADHD-related symptoms (0.214 ≤ p ≤ 0.989), but a positive association with self-reported depressive severity ( p = 0.018) and negative association with powers in the EEG delta and theta bands (0.001 ≤ p ≤ 0.033). Conclusions In view of high comorbidity of depression and ADHD in adult patients, these findings support the assumption that brain arousal regulation could be considered as a helpful marker for the clinical differentiation between ADHD and depression.

Kinetic pupillary size using Pentacam in myopia

“…HM was associated with structural and functional changes in the visual cortical area and non-visual cortices (i.e., altered neural substrate), one of whose clinical manifestations was the attention deficits (Zhai et al, 2016). Not surprisingly, the attention deficits were associated with the state of arousal (Brown and McMullen, 2001;Huang et al, 2019). It is prospective 10.3389/fnins.2022.981436 and hopeful that future studies involved in interdisciplinary cooperation are planned to confirm, enrich and explain our findings.…”

Assessment of Attentional Processes in Patients with Anxiety-Depressive Disorders Using Virtual Reality

“…In the case of the group with affective disorders, a worse performance was observed in these scores related to the attentional arousal during the test; as was recently found in a population affected by ADHD [65]. Different studies have shown difficulties in updating working memory and in disengaging the focus on non-relevant information related to ruminant thinking in these patients [66][67][68][69]. In addition, in this clinical sample, significant deficits were observed in the processing speed of the stimuli [70], which could be related to the slowdown described both at the clinical level and in laboratory tests in these patients [19].…”

Brain Arousal as Measured by EEG-Assessment Differs Between Children and Adolescents With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Depression

“…In another study by this research group, a sample of adult ADHD patients were divided into a stable and an unstable group, regarding their arousal decline during the EEG measurement. The participants in the slower arousal declining group reported more depressive symptoms than the unstable group, but no association was found to ADHD symptomatology (37). In a study on adult individuals with diagnosis of ADHD, a multiple regression analysis indicated that retrospectively assessed severity of childhood ADHD symptoms was associated to arousal regulation (15).…”