Withholding and canceling a response in ADHD adolescents

Deficient response inhibition in situations involving a trade-off between response execution and response stopping is a hallmark of attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD). There are two key components of response inhibition; reactive inhibition where one attempts to cancel an ongoing response and prospective inhibition is when one withholds a response pending a signal to stop. Prospective inhibition comes into play prior to the presentation of the stop signal and reactive inhibition follows the presentation of a signal to stop a particular action. The aim of this study is to investigate the neural activity evoked by prospective and reactive inhibition in adolescents with and without ADHD.

Twelve adolescents with ADHD and 12 age-matched healthy controls (age range 9-18) were imaged while performing the stop signal task (SST).

Reactive inhibition activated right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) in both groups. ADHD subjects activated IFG bilaterally. In controls, prospective inhibition invoked preactivation of the same part of right IFG that activated during reactive inhibition. In ADHD subjects, prospective inhibition was associated with deactivation in this region. Controls also deactivated the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) during prospective inhibition, whereas ADHD subjects activated the same area.

This pattern of activity changes in the same structures, but in opposite directions, was also evident across all phases of the task in various task-specific areas like the superior and middle temporal gyrus and other frontal areas.

Differences between ADHD and control participants in task-specific and default mode structures (IFG and MPFC) were evident during prospective, but not during reactive inhibition.