Lateral Prefrontal Theta Oscillations Reflect Proactive Cognitive Control Impairment in Males With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Francisco Zamorano*, Leonie Kausel, Carlos Albornoz, Claudio Lavin, Alejandra Figueroa-Vargas, Ximena Stecher, Diego Aragón-Caqueo, Ximena Carrasco, Francisco Aboitiz, Pablo Billeke*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

9 Scopus citations

Abstract

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a common neuropsychiatric disorder in which children present prefrontal cortex (PFC) related functions deficit. Proactive cognitive control is a process that anticipates the requirement of cognitive control and crucially depends on the maturity of the PFC. Since this process is important to ADHD symptomatology, we here test the hypothesis that children with ADHD have proactive cognitive control impairments and that these impairments are reflected in the PFC oscillatory activity. We recorded EEG signals from 29 male children with ADHD and 25 typically developing (TD) male children while they performed a Go-Nogo task, where the likelihood of a Nogo stimulus increased while a sequence of consecutive Go stimuli elapsed. TD children showed proactive cognitive control by increasing their reaction time (RT) concerning the number of preceding Go stimuli, whereas children with ADHD did not. This adaptation was related to modulations in both P3a potential and lateral prefrontal theta oscillation for TD children. Children with ADHD as a group did not demonstrate either P3a or theta modulation. But, individual variation in theta activity was correlated with the ADHD symptomatology. The results depict a neurobiological mechanism of proactive cognitive control impairments in children with ADHD.

Original languageEnglish
Article number37
JournalFrontiers in Systems Neuroscience
Volume14
DOIs
StatePublished - 2020
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© Copyright © 2020 Zamorano, Kausel, Albornoz, Lavin, Figueroa-Vargas, Stecher, Aragón-Caqueo, Carrasco, Aboitiz and Billeke.

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Neuroscience (miscellaneous)
  • Developmental Neuroscience
  • Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience

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