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Activation in ventral prefrontal cortex is sensitive to genetic vulnerability for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Durston S, Mulder M, Casey BJ, Ziermans T, van Engeland H

Rudolf Magnus Institute of Neuroscience, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University Medical Center Utrecht, 3584 CX Utrecht, The Netherlands. S.Durston@azu.nl

BACKGROUND: Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a heritable neuropsychiatric disorder, associated with atypical patterns of brain activation in functional imaging studies. Neuroimaging measures may serve as an intermediate phenotype in genetic studies of ADHD, as they are putatively more closely linked to gene expression than a clinical diagnosis. METHODS: We used rapid, mixed-trial, event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate changes in brain activation during a go no-go task in boys with ADHD, their unaffected siblings, and matched control subjects. RESULTS: On the hardest inhibitory trials in our task, children and adolescents with ADHD had lower accuracy than control subjects, whereas their unaffected siblings did not. Control subjects activated a network of regions, including ventral prefrontal and inferior parietal cortex. Both children and adolescents with ADHD and their unaffected siblings showed decreased activation in these areas, as well as fewer correlations between performance and activation. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that the magnitude of activation during successful inhibitions is sensitive to genetic vulnerability for ADHD in a number of regions, including ventral prefrontal cortex. If this can be replicated in future studies, this suggests that neuroimaging measures related to inhibitory control may be suitable as intermediate phenotypes in studies investigating gene effects in ADHD.

Published 3 November 2006 in Biol Psychiatry, 60(10): 1062-70.
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