WHAT'S KNOWN ON THIS SUBJECT: Studies examining the prevalence and associated features of autistic traits (ATs) in children with ADHD with exclusionary autism spectrum disorders suggest that children with ATs exhibit more severe social and interpersonal dysfunction reminiscent of the deficits in children with autism spectrum disorders. WHAT THIS STUDY ADDS:Our results suggest that ATs are overrepresented in ADHD children when compared with control subjects. They also suggest that the presence of ATs is associated with more severe psychopathology as well as more impaired interpersonal, school, family, and cognitive functioning. abstract OBJECTIVE: To assess the implications of autistic traits (ATs) in youth with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) without a diagnosis of autism.METHODS: Participants were youth with (n = 242) and without (n = 227) ADHD and controls without ADHD in whom a diagnosis of autism was exclusionary. Assessment included measures of psychiatric, psychosocial, educational, and cognitive functioning. ATs were operationalized by using the withdrawn + social + thought problems T scores from the Child Behavior Checklist. RESULTS:A positive AT profile was significantly overrepresented among ADHD children versus controls (18% vs 0.87%; P , .001). ADHD children with the AT profile were significantly more impaired than control subjects in psychopathology, interpersonal, school, family, and cognitive domains. CONCLUSIONS:A substantial minority of ADHD children manifests ATs, and those exhibiting ATs have greater severity of illness and dysfunction. Pediatrics 2013;132:e612-e622 AUTHORS:

This study investigated the neural basis of individual variation in emotion regulation, specifically the ability to reappraise negative stimuli so as to down-regulate negative affect. Brain functions in young adults were measured with functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging during three conditions: (i) attending to neutral pictures; (ii) attending to negative pictures and (iii) reappraising negative pictures. Resting-state functional connectivity was measured with amygdala and dorsolateral prefrontal cortical (DLPFC) seed regions frequently associated with emotion regulation. Participants reported more negative affect after attending to negative than neutral pictures, and less negative affect following reappraisal. Both attending to negative vs neutral pictures and reappraising vs attending to negative pictures yielded widespread activations that were significantly right-lateralized for attending to negative pictures and left-lateralized for reappraising negative pictures. Across participants, more successful reappraisal correlated with less trait anxiety and more positive daily emotion, greater activation in medial and lateral prefrontal regions, and lesser resting-state functional connectivity between (a) right amygdala and both medial prefrontal and posterior cingulate cortices, and (b) bilateral DLPFC and posterior visual cortices. The ability to regulate emotion, a source of resilience or of risk for distress, appears to vary in relation to differences in intrinsic functional brain architecture.

A recent meta-analysis documented a significant statistical association between mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) (Adeyemo et al., 2014), but the direction of this effect was unclear. In this study, we hypothesized that ADHD would be an antecedent risk factor for mTBI. Participants were student athletes ages 12–25 who had sustained a mTBI and Controls of similar age and sex selected from studies of youth with and without ADHD. Subjects were assessed for symptoms of ADHD, concussion severity, and cognitive function. mTBI subjects had a significantly higher rate of ADHD than Controls, and in all cases the age of onset of ADHD was before mTBI onset. mTBI+ADHD subjects also had more severe concussion symptoms (fatigue and poor concentration) than mTBI-ADHD subjects. These results support ADHD as an antecedent risk factor for mTBI in student athletes and that its presence complicates the course of mTBI.

Despite growing evidence for atypical amygdala function and structure in major depression, it remains uncertain as to whether these brain differences reflect the clinical state of depression or neurobiological traits that predispose individuals to major depression. We examined function and structure of the amygdala and associated areas in a group of unaffected children of depressed parents (at-risk group) and a group of children of parents without a history of major depression (control group). Compared to the control group, the at-risk group showed increased activation to fearful relative to neutral facial expressions in the amygdala and multiple cortical regions, and decreased activation to happy relative to neutral facial expressions in the anterior cingulate cortex and supramarginal gyrus. At-risk children also exhibited reduced amygdala volume. The extensive hyperactivation to negative facial expressions and hypoactivation to positive facial expressions in at-risk children are consistent with behavioral evidence that risk for major depression involves a bias to attend to negative information. These functional and structural brain differences between at-risk children and controls suggest that there are trait neurobiological underpinnings of risk for major depression.