Functional and structural brain network development in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a prevalent childhood neurodevelopmental disorder. Given the profound brain changes that occur during childhood and adolescence, it is important to examine longitudinal changes of both functional and structural brain connectivity across development in ADHD. This study aimed to examine the development of functional and structural connectivity in children with ADHD compared to controls using graph metrics. One hundred and seventy five individuals (91 children with ADHD and 84 non-ADHD controls) participated in a longitudinal neuroimaging study with up to three waves. Graph metrics were derived from 370 resting state fMRI (197 Control, 173 ADHD) and 297 diffusion weighted imaging data (152 Control, 145 ADHD) acquired between the ages of 9 and 14. For functional connectivity, children with ADHD (compared to typically developing children) showed lower degree, local efficiency and betweenness centrality predominantly in parietal, temporal and visual cortices and higher degree, local efficiency and betweenness centrality in frontal, parietal, and temporal cortices. For structural connectivity, children with ADHD had lower local efficiency in parietal and temporal cortices and, higher degree and betweenness centrality in frontal, parietal and temporal cortices. Further, differential developmental trajectories of functional and structural connectivity for graph measures were observed in higher-order cognitive and sensory regions. Our findings show that topology of functional and structural connectomes matures differently between typically developing controls and children with ADHD during childhood and adolescence. Specifically, functional and structural neural circuits associated with sensory and various higher order cognitive functions are altered in children with ADHD.