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A Study of 7,000 Children Challenges a Basic Assumption About ADHD and Attention
Avery Miles
5–6 minutes

People have different levels of inhibitory control of attention, which is the cognitive skill that allows someone to focus on a specific task and tune out distractions.

Scientists have theorized that people ADHD might have actual physical differences in connectivity between parts of the brain that handle inhibitory control and attention, but recent research from Alberta Children’s Hospital Research Institute at the University of Calgary suggests that the brain-connectivity relationship associated with inhibitory attention did not significantly differ between children with and without ADHD.
Discovering New Insights into ADHD

Despite prior research, it has been unclear whether having an official ADHD diagnosis changes the fundamental relationship between a person’s attention skills and their brain connectivity. To bridge this gap, researchers at Alberta Children’s Hospital Research Institute at the University of Calgary studied whether children with ADHD exist along the same continuum of brain and behavior associations as children without the diagnosis.

Pulling information from a massive, long-term national project called the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development database, the research team analyzed data from over 7,000 nine and ten year-olds. Within this group, nearly 500 children had a current diagnosis of ADHD while the rest of the children served as a baseline control group.

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Then the researchers analyzed resting-state fMRI scans of all the participants, which observe the brain while a person is lying still and remaining awake. Since participants don’t have to perform tasks while inside the scanner, this allows the scanner to record the brain’s default communication patterns.

The study only included nine and ten year-olds, and it also relied on just one test—the Flanker Inhibitory Control and Attention test—to measure inhibitory control, which is just one component of ADHD. Researchers also noted that using multiple assessments together could yield a more rounded picture of childhood cognitive function in future projects.
Bridging the Gap

The study revealed independent patterns that linked resting brain connectivity to both attention scores and diagnostic status.

It also found, according to analysis by PsyPost, that having an ADHD diagnosis was associated with connectivity patterns in brain regions that usually help orient the brain to unexpected sounds or new stimuli in the surrounding environment.

But there was no overlap when the researchers compared the networks linked to attention scores with the networks linked to ADHD. The brain connectivity differences associated with an ADHD diagnosis were distinct from the connectivity differences associated with basic attention skills.

The most important finding came after the team tested whether an ADHD diagnosis altered the relationship between a child’s attention score and their brain connectivity. Their results indicated a lack of interaction, which means the association between inhibitory-attention scores and functional connectivity did not significantly differ by ADHD diagnosis.

Based on this study’s findings, it appears functional connectivity differences seen in children with ADHD might be driven by other factors. The findings leave open the possibility that ADHD-associated connectivity reflects factors beyond inhibitory attention.

The study further suggests that researchers can look at fundamental cognitive traits across the entire population, instead of organizing individuals into rigid diagnostic categories.
Redefining how developmental disorders are diagnosed and treated in the future

As children grow, attention abilities and brain networks both develop and change rapidly. Certain networks develop and prune during adolescence. To see if this unified spectrum of attention might stay consistent throughout the human lifespan, future developmental studies will need to track participants across different age ranges.

Future research could also reveal additional details about the physiology of hyperactivity and attention; for example, deeper regions like the thalamus and striatum are known to play regulatory roles in attention, and these are the regions acted on by stimulant medications prescribed for ADHD.

Researchers could also redefine how developmental disorders are diagnosed and treated in the future. By viewing attention as a continuum rather than a strictly binary trait, scientists could foster better long-term outcomes for patients in the future.

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The linked article in the inc post is way better written, has details of the study and the scientists involved and a direct link to the study involved.

https://www.psypost.org/brain-connectivity-for-attention-operates-on-a-unified-spectrum/