Visuospatial Working Memory Capacity in the Brain After Working Memory Training in College Students With ADHD: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Abstract

Objective: ADHD has been associated with persistent problems of working memory. This study investigated the efficacy of an intensive and adaptive computerized working memory treatment (CWMT) at behavioral and neural levels. Method: College students ( n = 89; 40 females) with ADHD were randomized into a standard-length CWMT (45 min/session, 25 sessions, n = 29), shortened-length CWMT (15 min/session, 25 sessions, n = 32), and a waitlist group ( n = 28). Both CWMT groups received treatment for 5 days a week for 5 weeks. Lab sessions before and after CWMT assessed electroencephalography (EEG) indicators of working memory, behavioral indicators of working memory performance, and ADHD symptomatology. Results: No evidence was found for neural or any other behavioral transfer effects of improvement for the CWMT treatment groups over the active control or waitlist group. Conclusion: Our study does not provide evidence for the benefits of CWMT at neural or behavioral levels.

Early Attentional Modulation by Working Memory Training in Young Adult ADHD Patients during a Risky Decision-Making Task

“…In our current paper, we did not observe group effects (i.e., differences between controls and ADHD) on the measurements of PGT due to the working memory training, other than on the response times ( Table 2). Our finding is in agreement with the observation that working memory training in general improves processing speed and attention performance [87] independently of the transfer to fluid intelligence [24,62,79] and that inattentive symptoms in ADHD are not associated with fluid intelligence [78,79,88] Hence, we do not discuss further the gambling task-related ERP components but P1 and LPN, the wave components which appeared to be the most affected by dual n-back task working memory training.…”

“…If we consider all these observations together we may raise the hypothesis that WMT with the dual n-back task is able to generate a transfer effect in the PGT [111,112], as revealed by the LPN associated with a continued evaluation of contextual information in our PGT. This effect is strong in controls, but it is absent in our ADHD group, thus suggesting that the kind of WMT performed by our group of patients only confers benefits for those tasks that were trained [15,62,113]. We could speculate that a deficit in transfer effects associated with WM training could be associated with the abnormal parietal brain function observed in ADHD [114].…”

“…Improvement of symptomatology by cognitive training and psychological interventions aimed to increase the correlation between sustained attention and arousal has been evalued several times in the recent past [58][59][60][61]. However, benefits for behavioral transfer effects to measures of fluid intelligence after several weeks of a computerized working memory treatment requiring high cognitive load could not be confirmed satisfactorily and raised questions about the controversial usefulness of such training [22,24,62]. The demand on cognitive processes is increased by the dual n-back task, which is a particular task aimed at challenging the divided attention by running visual and auditory modalities concurrently with the potential of WMT to compensate for a decline in executive functions [47,63].…”

The effects of working memory training in children revealed by behavioral responses and ERP

“…From the previous WM training research, the brain regions where P3 amplitude enhanced or P3 latency reduced after training mainly involved frontal lobe as well as parietal lobe (Chen et al, 2019;Covey et al, 2018;Gajewski & Falkenstein, 2018), that is, WM training led to increased amplitudes and shortened latencies of P3a and P3b. However, there are a few studies which obtained inconsistent results (Liu et al, 2016;Woltering et al, 2021). Two studies found that there was no convincing evidence that the WM training per se changes neural activation patterns of behavioral tasks in Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) adults (Liu et al, 2016;Woltering et al, 2021).…”

“…However, there are a few studies which obtained inconsistent results (Liu et al, 2016;Woltering et al, 2021). Two studies found that there was no convincing evidence that the WM training per se changes neural activation patterns of behavioral tasks in Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) adults (Liu et al, 2016;Woltering et al, 2021). Thus, it remains an open question whether WM training could lead to increased amplitudes and shortened latencies of P3a and P3b.…”