AUTHOR=Mennes Maarten , Vega Potler Natan , Kelly Clare , Di Martino Adriana , Castellanos F. Xavier , Milham Michael P. 

TITLE=Resting State Functional Connectivity Correlates of Inhibitory Control in Children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychiatry

VOLUME=Volume 2 - 2011

YEAR=2012

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2011.00083

DOI=10.3389/fpsyt.2011.00083

ISSN=1664-0640

ABSTRACT=Motor inhibition is among the most commonly studied executive functions in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Imaging studies using probes of motor inhibition such as the Stop Signal Task (SST) consistently demonstrate ADHD-related dysfunction within a right-hemisphere fronto-striatal network that includes inferior frontal gyrus and pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA). Beyond findings of focal hypo- or hyper-function, emerging models of ADHD psychopathology highlight disease-related changes in functional interactions between network components. Resting state fMRI (R-fMRI) approaches have emerged as powerful tools for mapping such interactions (i.e., resting state functional connectivity, RSFC), and for relating behavioral and diagnostic variables to network properties. We used R-fMRI data collected from 17 typically developing controls (TDC) and 17 age-matched children with ADHD (aged 8-13 years) to identify neural correlates of SST performance measured outside the scanner. We examined two related inhibition indices: stop signal reaction time (SSRT), indexing inhibitory speed, and stop signal delay (SSD), indexing inhibitory success. Using 11 fronto-striatal seed regions-of-interest, we queried the brain for relationships between RSFC and each performance index, as well as for interactions with diagnostic status. Both SSRT and SSD exhibited connectivity-behavior relationships independent of diagnosis. At the same time, we found differential connectivity-behavior relationships in children with ADHD relative to TDC. Our results demonstrate the utility of RSFC approaches for assessing brain/behavior relationships, and for identifying pathology-related differences in the contributions of neural circuits to cognition and behavior.