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Meta-Analysis Characterizes Neural Activation Differences in ADHD and ASD
A meta-analysis of 243 studies found both similar and different neural activations during task completion in participants with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) compared with typically developing control subjects. Researchers published their findings in the American Journal of Psychiatry.
“Although ASD and ADHD showed both shared and disorder-specific standardized neural activations, disorder-specific activations were more prominent than shared ones,” wrote corresponding author Yuta Y. Aoki, MD, PhD, of Showa University and the Aoki Clinic, Tokyo, Japan, and study coauthors.
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The meta-analysis focused on task-based functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies that investigated differences in participants with ADHD or ASD and control subjects with typical development. In all, the 243 selected studies included 3084 participants with ADHD (of whom 676 were female), 2654 participants with ASD (292 were female), and 6795 control subjects (1909 were female).
In participants with ASD and ADHD, functional MRI identified shared greater activations in the lingual and rectal gyri compared with controls, according to the study. Participants with ASD and ADHD also had shared lower activations in the middle frontal gyrus, the parahippocampal gyrus, and the insula.
Disorder-specific differences in ASD included greater activation in the left middle temporal gyrus and lower activation in the left middle frontal gyrus. Meanwhile, participants with ADHD showed greater activation in the amygdala and lower activation in the global pallidus, researchers reported.
“Functional brain differences between ADHD and ASD,” they wrote, “are more likely to reflect diagnosis-related pathophysiology than bias from the selection of specific neuropsychological tasks.”
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