Cerebro-cerebellar Dysconnectivity in Children and Adolescents With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

Abstract

Objective: Abnormal cerebellar development has been implicated in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), although cerebro-cerebellar functional connectivity (FC) has yet to be examined in ADHD. Our objective is to investigate the disturbed cerebro-cerebellar FC in children and adolescents with ADHD.

Method: We analyzed a dataset of 106 individuals with ADHD (68 children, 38 adolescents) and 62 healthy comparison individuals (34 children, 28 adolescents) from the publicly available ADHD-200 dataset. We identified 7 cerebellar subregions based on cerebro-cerebellar FC and subsequently obtained the FC maps of cerebro-cerebellar networks. The main effects of ADHD and age and their interaction were examined using 2-way analysis of variance.

Results: Compared to comparisons, ADHD showed higher cerebro-cerebellar FC in the superior temporal gyrus within the somatomotor network. Interactions of diagnosis and age were identified in the supplementary motor area and postcentral gyrus within the somatomotor network and middle temporal gyrus within the ventral attention network. Follow-up Pearson correlation analysis revealed decreased cerebro-cerebellar FC in these regions with increasing age in comparisons, whereas the opposite pattern of increased cerebro-cerebellar FC occurred in ADHD.

Conclusion: Increased cerebro-cerebellar FC in the superior temporal gyrus within the somatomotor network could underlie impairments in cognitive control and somatic motor function in ADHD. In addition, increasing cerebro-cerebellar FC in older participants with ADHD suggests that enhanced cerebellar involvement may compensate for dysfunctions of the cerebral cortex in ADHD.

Keywords: ADHD; age; cerebro-cerebellar functional connectivity; interaction effect; main effects.