A comparative diagnostic study using clinical and multimodal assessment, including functional neuroimaging and oculomotricity tools, to differentiate ADHD in young patients from healthy control group

Ma G 1 , Eng AE 2 , Chiang SK 3 , Hao F 3 , McIntyre RS 4 , Zhou D 5 Show all authors , Yang Y 6 , Ho RC 3 , Yam KC 7

Affiliations 

  • 1 School of Medicine, Tsinghua Medicine, Tsinghua University, Beijing, People's Republic of China
  • 2 Department of Organizational Behaivior, Asia School of Business, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  • 3 Division of Functional Near Infrared Stectroscopy, Institute for Health Innovation and Technology (iHealthtech), National University of Singapore, Singapore
  • 4 Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  • 5 Cognitive and Developmental Psychology Laboratory, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
  • 6 The Medical Department, Chengdu Second People's Hospital, Chengdu, China
  • 7 Department of Management and Organization, NUS Business School, National University of Singapore, Singapore
Psychiatry Clin Neurosci, 2025 Feb 04.
PMID: 39901842 DOI: 10.1111/pcn.13788

Abstract

AIM: Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that may persist into adulthood, with no established objective diagnostic tool yet. This study aims to propose a multimodal objective assessment tool involving clinical assessments, functional neuroimaging, and oculomotricity measurement for ADHD in young adults.

METHODS: Seventy-one medication-naïve patients and 71 healthy controls (HCs) aged 18 to 28 underwent clinical interviews, Conners' Adult ADHD Rating Scale (CAARS) questionnaire, functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), oculomotricity task, and Conners' Continuous Performance Task (CPT) 3rd edition. Student's t-tests with Bonferroni's correction were performed to compare the performance between groups, and logistic regression was used for classification.

RESULTS: ADHD patients had significantly lower frontal hemodynamic response during verbal fluency task (VFT) (P = 0.0003), more anticipatory eye movements during overlap task (P = 0.0006), higher latency (P 

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

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