Characterizing anatomic differences in boys with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder with the use of deformation-based morphometry.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Most previous neuroimaging studies of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) rely on the manual delineation of the region of interest, which is subjective and lacks reproducibility. The purpose of this study was to use an automated method to assess whether there are abnormalities in the brains of patients with ADHD. In view of findings from previous imaging and neuropsychologic studies, we predicted that we would detect abnormalities in many brain regions of patients with ADHD. MATERIALS AND METHODS Twelve boys with ADHD and 12 control subjects underwent MR imaging assessments. Statistically significant changes in regional volume were analyzed by using deformation based morphometry (DBM). This technique derived a voxel-wise estimation of regional tissue volume change from the deformation field required to warp subject to the template image. Morphologic differences between groups were estimated at each voxel, applying a threshold (P < .001) to the resulting voxel statistic maps to generate clusters of spatially contiguous suprathreshold voxels, RESULTS The statistical results reveal some pronounced volume alterations in the brains of ADHD. Volume reductions are mainly localized in right prefrontal (Talairach 48, 20, 31), right medial temporal (Talairach 59, -52, 13), left parietal lobe (Talairach -32, -61, 41), and right basal ganglia (especially right putamen) (Talairach 21, 1, 11); the regions of volume enlargement in the brains of ADHD are observed in the right occipital lobe (Talairach 20, -86, 29) and in the left posterior lateral ventricle (Talairach -23, -40, 15). CONCLUSION Our findings confirm that there are widespread abnormalities in volume of boys with ADHD.

[1]  P. Renshaw,et al.  Volumetric MRI analysis comparing subjects having attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder with normal controls , 1997, Neurology.

[2]  Manzar Ashtari,et al.  White matter abnormalities in first-episode schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder: a diffusion tensor imaging study. , 2005, The American journal of psychiatry.

[3]  R. Barkley,et al.  Genetics of Childhood Disorders: XVII. ADHD, Part 1: The Executive Functions and ADHD , 2000 .

[4]  Daniel Rueckert,et al.  An Evaluation of Deformation-Based Morphometry Applied to the Developing Human Brain and Detection of Volumetric Changes Associated with Preterm Birth , 2003, MICCAI.

[5]  Daniel Rueckert,et al.  Nonrigid registration using free-form deformations: application to breast MR images , 1999, IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging.

[6]  A. Baumeister,et al.  Incoherence of neuroimaging studies of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. , 2001, Clinical neuropharmacology.

[7]  M. Alexander,et al.  Principles of Neural Science , 1981 .

[8]  Leslie G. Ungerleider,et al.  Increased Activity in Human Visual Cortex during Directed Attention in the Absence of Visual Stimulation , 1999, Neuron.

[9]  P. Herscovitch,et al.  Brain metabolism in teenagers with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. , 1993, Archives of general psychiatry.

[10]  B. J. Casey,et al.  Differential patterns of striatal activation in young children with and without ADHD , 2003, Biological Psychiatry.

[11]  R. Cabeza,et al.  Imaging Cognition II: An Empirical Review of 275 PET and fMRI Studies , 2000, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[12]  L. Henriksen,et al.  Focal cerebral dysfunction in developmental learning disabilities , 1990, The Lancet.

[13]  E. Bullmore,et al.  Distributed grey and white matter deficits in hyperkinetic disorder: MRI evidence for anatomical abnormality in an attentional network , 2001, Psychological Medicine.

[14]  S. Kiebel,et al.  Detecting Structural Changes in Whole Brain Based on Nonlinear Deformations—Application to Schizophrenia Research , 1999, NeuroImage.

[15]  M. Ernst,et al.  Cerebral glucose metabolism in adolescent girls with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. , 1997, Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

[16]  David R. Haynor,et al.  PET-CT image registration in the chest using free-form deformations , 2003, IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging.

[17]  Jerry L Prince,et al.  A computerized approach for morphological analysis of the corpus callosum. , 1996, Journal of computer assisted tomography.

[18]  Benoit M. Dawant,et al.  The adaptive bases algorithm for intensity-based nonrigid image registration , 2003, IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging.

[19]  Dinggang Shen,et al.  Automated morphometric study of brain variation in XXY males , 2004, NeuroImage.

[20]  M. Weissman,et al.  Religiosity and depression: ten-year follow-up of depressed mothers and offspring. , 1997, Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

[21]  Guy Marchal,et al.  Multimodality image registration by maximization of mutual information , 1997, IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging.

[22]  G. E. Alexander,et al.  Parallel organization of functionally segregated circuits linking basal ganglia and cortex. , 1986, Annual review of neuroscience.

[23]  Suzanne E. Welcome,et al.  Cortical abnormalities in children and adolescents with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder , 2003, The Lancet.

[24]  R. Simons,et al.  Error-related brain activity in obsessive–compulsive undergraduates , 2002, Psychiatry Research.

[25]  Godfrey D Pearlson,et al.  MRI parcellation of the frontal lobe in boys with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or Tourette syndrome , 2002, Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging.

[26]  K. Bergström,et al.  Computed tomography of the brain in children with minimal brain damage: a preliminary study of 46 children. , 1978, Neuropadiatrie.

[27]  D. Louis Collins,et al.  Retrospective evaluation of intersubject brain registration , 2003, IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging.

[28]  J. Pujol,et al.  Magnetic resonance imaging measurement of the caudate nucleus in adolescents with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and its relationship with neuropsychological and behavioral measures. , 1997, Archives of neurology.

[29]  Alan C. Evans,et al.  Quantitative brain magnetic resonance imaging in girls with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. , 2001, Archives of general psychiatry.

[30]  E. Bullmore,et al.  Hypofrontality in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder during higher-order motor control: a study with functional MRI. , 1999, The American journal of psychiatry.

[31]  K M Heilman,et al.  A Possible Pathophysiologic Substrate of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder , 1991, Journal of child neurology.

[32]  Nicole M Dudukovic,et al.  Altered neural substrates of cognitive control in childhood ADHD: evidence from functional magnetic resonance imaging. , 2005, The American journal of psychiatry.

[33]  Ir W. De Backer,et al.  Review of neuroimaging studies of child and adolescent psychiatric disorders from the past 10 years. , 2000, Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

[34]  M. Ernst,et al.  Reduced brain metabolism in hyperactive girls. , 1994, Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

[35]  In Kyoon Lyoo,et al.  The corpus callosum and lateral ventricles in children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder: A brain magnetic resonance imaging study , 1996, Biological Psychiatry.

[36]  R J Seitz,et al.  Representations of Graphomotor Trajectories in the Human Parietal Cortex: Evidence for Controlled Processing and Automatic Performance , 1997, The European journal of neuroscience.

[37]  J. Rapoport,et al.  Quantitative brain magnetic resonance imaging in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. , 1996, Archives of general psychiatry.

[38]  Stephen M Smith,et al.  Fast robust automated brain extraction , 2002, Human brain mapping.

[39]  Eric R. Kandel,et al.  Perception of motion, depth and form , 2000 .