Improvement of facial affect recognition in children and adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder under methylphenidate

Abstract

The collected data showed that methylphenidate leads to amelioration of facial affect recognition abilities, but not on a significant level. Reasons for missing significance may be the small sample size or the fact that there exists some overlapping in cerebral connections and metabolic pathways of the site of action of methylphenidate and the affected dopaminergic areas in ADHD. However, consistent with the endophenotype concept, certain gene locations of the dopaminergic metabolism as both an aetiological factor for ADHD and the deficient facial affect recognition abilities with these individuals were considered. Consulting current literature they were found to be not concordant. Therefore, we conclude that the lacking significance of the methylphenidate affect on facial affect recognition is based on this fact.

Biological Bases of Empathy and Social Cognition in Patients with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: A Focus on Treatment with Psychostimulants

“…Seven studies [ 31 , 50 , 58 , 60 , 68 , 69 , 70 ] assessing the effects of psychostimulants and nonstimulant drugs on emotion recognition abilities in individuals with ADHD were finally identified. Most of the studies were conducted on children and adolescents aged 7 to 17 years old, except for one study [ 69 ] that included adult patients.…”

“…Most of the studies were conducted on children and adolescents aged 7 to 17 years old, except for one study [ 69 ] that included adult patients. Diagnoses were based on DSM-IV and, in one case [ 31 ], on the ICD classification system, and included different proportions of ADHD subtypes; intelligence was generally on average, whereas other psychiatric comorbidities were excluded based on standardized criteria except for two studies [ 50 , 68 ] that included learning disabilities and internalizing disorders, respectively. Further details of the studies are reported in Table 2 .…”

“…Two studies [ 31 , 68 ] examined the effect of a single-dose administration of MPH on children with ADHD who were already taking the medication regularly at the time of the study. Particularly, the former study [ 68 ] compared 30 ADHD patients with and without learning disabilities (LD) to 15 matched controls with no ADHD nor LD and found that, while at baseline only ADHD patients with comorbid LD demonstrated greater difficulties in perceiving paralanguage gesture cues than the other groups, as assessed through the Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy test, the effect of medication was to equalize such differences.…”

“…Face emotion recognition has also been linked to temporal, prefrontal (e.g., orbitofrontal), and anterior cingulate regions, as well as the amygdala and the basal ganglia [ 30 ]. Finally, a connection between the perception of emotions and the dopaminergic pathway has been demonstrated [ 31 ].…”

Emotional Intelligence in Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

“…There is a deficiency in recognizing emotions from facial expressions in children and adolescents with ADHD (Yuill and Lyon 2007). In some studies, recognizing emotions from facial expressions was also found to improve with methylphenidate treatment (von Morgenstern et al 2014). Therapies focusing on emotional skills such Psikiyatride Güncel Yaklaşımlar -Current Approaches in Psychiatry as emotion management is reported to be effective for various psychiatric disorders, including ADHD (Mennin and Farach 2007).…”