Regularity analysis of spontaneous MEG activity in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

The aim of this study was to analyze the magnetoencephalography (MEG) background activity in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) using a regularity measure: sample entropy (SampEn). Five minutes of recording were acquired with a 148-channel whole-head magnetometer in 14 ADHD patients and 14 control subjects. Our results showed that ADHD patients' MEGs were more regular than controls' recordings. Additionally, there were statistically significant differences (p < 0.01, Student's t-test with Bonferroni's correction) at the five analyzed brain areas: anterior, central, posterior, left lateral and right lateral. Using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves, the highest accuracy (82.14%) was achieved at posterior region, whereas the highest area under the ROC curves (0.8827) were reached at anterior and central brain regions. These results suggest the usefulness of SampEn to reveal an abnormal type of dynamics associated with ADHD.

[1]  S M Pincus,et al.  Approximate entropy as a measure of system complexity. , 1991, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[2]  S. Faraone,et al.  Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder , 2005, The Lancet.

[3]  Ramesh Srinivasan,et al.  Functional connectivity of frontal cortex in healthy and ADHD children reflected in EEG coherence. , 2007, Cerebral cortex.

[4]  Alan C. Evans,et al.  Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder is characterized by a delay in cortical maturation , 2007, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[5]  Wuon-Shik Kim,et al.  Nonlinear characteristics of heart rate time series: influence of three recumbent positions in patients with mild or severe coronary artery disease , 2005, Physiological measurement.

[6]  G. Bush.  Neuroimaging of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: can new imaging findings be integrated in clinical practice? , 2008, Child and adolescent psychiatric clinics of North America.

[7]  J. Escudero,et al.  Analysis of MEG Background Activity in Alzheimer’s Disease Using Nonlinear Methods and ANFIS , 2009, Annals of Biomedical Engineering.

[8]  Roberto Hornero,et al.  Analysis of regularity in the EEG background activity of Alzheimer's disease patients with Approximate Entropy , 2005, Clinical Neurophysiology.

[9]  J. Richman,et al.  Physiological time-series analysis using approximate entropy and sample entropy. , 2000, American journal of physiology. Heart and circulatory physiology.

[10]  E Gordon,et al.  Simultaneous EEG and EDA measures in adolescent attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. , 1999, International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology.

[11]  Roberto Hornero,et al.  Complexity Analysis of Spontaneous Brain Activity in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: Diagnostic Implications , 2009, Biological Psychiatry.

[12]  R. Barkley,et al.  Young adult outcome of hyperactive children: adaptive functioning in major life activities. , 2006, Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

[13]  Wonhye Lee,et al.  Approximate entropy (ApEn) analysis of the EEG in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD) during cognitive tasks , 2007 .