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SAGE Publications, Journal of Attention Disorders, 11(19), p. 944-953, 2013

DOI: 10.1177/1087054713506041

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Toward Defining the Neural Substrates of ADHD: A Controlled Structural MRI Study in Medication-Naive Adults

This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

Objective: We assessed the neural correlates of adult ADHD in treatment-naïve participants, an approach necessary for identifying neural substrates unconfounded by medication effects. Method: The sample consisted of 24 medication-naïve adults with Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.; DSM-IV) diagnosed ADHD and 24 healthy controls, comparable on age, sex, handedness, reading achievement, IQ, and psychiatric comorbidity. All participants were assessed with structured diagnostic interviews. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-based regional voxel-based morphometry (r-VBM) was used to assess volumetric differences in a priori defined brain regions of interest. Results: VBM analysis revealed group differences in the hypothesized cortical and subcortical areas; however, only cerebellar volume reductions in ADHD retained significance ( p < .05) after corrections for multiple comparisons. Conclusion: These results support the notion that medication-naïve ADHD as expressed in adulthood, manifests subtle brain volume reductions from normal in the cerebellum, and possibly in other syndrome-congruent gray-matter structures. Larger samples are required to confirm these findings.