Inattentive and hyperactive traits differentially associate with interindividual functional synchrony during video viewing in young children without ADHD

Abstract

Inattention and hyperactivity present on a spectrum and may influence the way children perceive and interact with the world. We investigated whether normative variation in inattentive and hyperactive traits was associated with differences in brain function while children watched clips from an age-appropriate television program. fMRI data and parent reports of inattention and hyperactivity traits were collected from 81 children 4–7 years of age with no parent-reported diagnoses. Data were analyzed using inter-subject correlations in mixed effects models to determine if inattentive and hyperactive traits were associated with idiosyncrasy of fMRI response to the video. We hypothesized that pairs of children with higher average inattention and hyperactivity scores would show less inter-individual brain synchrony to one another than pairs with lower average scores on these traits. Video watching engaged widespread visual, auditory, default mode and dorsal prefrontal regions. Inattention and hyperactivity were separably associated with inter-subject correlation in many of these regions. Our findings suggest that the spectrum of inattention and hyperactivity traits in children without ADHD are differentially associated with neural processing of naturalistic video stimuli, which may have implications for understanding how children with different levels of these traits process audiovisual information in unconstrained conditions.

Real-world goal-directed behavior reveals aberrant functional connectivity in children with ADHD

“…Naturalistic neuroscience studies employing video viewing approach have shown promising results in detecting aberrant brain functioning in affective disorders [32,33], psychosis [34,35], autism [36,37,38,39], and ADHD [40,41,42]. In individuals with ADHD inter-individual synchronization of regional activity is reduced compared to neurotypical controls during viewing a naturalistic stimulus in several brain areas, including the anterior cingulate cortex, supratemporal, occipital, and posterior parietal regions [40,41].…”