Brain Alterations in Children/adolescents with ADHD Revisited: A Neuroimaging Meta-analysis of 96 Structural and Functional Studies

Overview

Journal Neurosci Biobehav Rev

Specialties Neurology
Psychology
Social Sciences

Date 2019 Feb 22

PMID 30790635

Citations 96

Authors

Fateme Samea

Solmaz Soluki

Vahid Nejati

Mojtaba Zarei

Samuele Cortese

Simon B Eickhoff

Masoud Tahmasian

Claudia R Eickhoff

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

The findings of neuroimaging studies in children/adolescents with ADHD, and even those of previous meta-analyses, are divergent. Here, Activation Likelihood Estimation meta-analysis, following the current best-practice guidelines, was conducted. We searched multiple databases and traced the references up to June 2018. Then, we extracted the reported coordinates reflecting group comparison between ADHD and healthy subjects from 96 eligible studies, containing 1914 unique participants. The analysis of pooled structural and functional, sub-analyses restricted to modality, and in-/decreased contrast did not yield any significant findings. However, further sub-analyses in the task-fMRI experiments (neutral stimuli only) led to aberrant activity in the left pallidum/putamen and decreased activity (male subjects only) in the left inferior frontal gyrus. The overall findings indicate a lack of regional convergence in children/adolescents with ADHD, which might be due to heterogeneous clinical populations, various experimental design, preprocessing, statistical procedures in individual publications. Our results highlight the need for further high-powered investigations, but may also indicate ADHD pathophysiology might rest in network interactions rather than just regional abnormality.

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