Increased cerebral blood flow in the right anterior cingulate cortex and fronto-orbital cortex during go/no-go task in children with ADHD

Abstract

Objective

Arterial spin labeling (ASL) is a relatively new imaging modality in the field of the cognitive neuroscience. In the present study, we aimed to compare the dynamic regional cerebral blood flow alterations of children with ADHD and healthy controls during a neurocognitive task by using event-related ASL scanning.

Methods

The study comprised of 17 healthy controls and 20 children with ADHD. The study subjects were scanned on 3 Tesla MRI scanner to obtain ASL imaging data. Subjects performed go/no-go task during the ASL image acquisition. The image analyses were performed by FEAT (fMRI Expert Analysis Tool) Version 6.

Results

The mean age was 10.88 +/- 1.45 and 11 +/- 1.91 for the control and ADHD group, respectively (p = .112). The go/no-go task was utilized during the ASL scanning. The right anterior cingulate cortex (BA32) extending into the frontopolar and orbitofrontal cortices (BA10 and 11) displayed greater activation in ADHD children relative to the control counterparts (p < .001). With a lenient significance threshold, greater activation was revealed in the right-sided frontoparietal regions during the go session, and in the left precuneus during the no-go session.

Conclusion

These results indicate that children with ADHD needed to over-activate frontopolar cortex, anterior cingulate as well as the dorsal and ventral attention networks to compensate for the attention demanded in a given cognitive task.