The diagnostic effect of integrated visual and auditory continuous performance and event-related potentials in ADHD

The development of objective assessment tools for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has become a hot research topic. The aim was to explore the value of the P300 wave and integrated visual and auditory continuous performance test (IVA-CPT) in diagnosing ADHD.

We enrolled 30 patients with ADHD and 30 age-matched healthy volunteers in a prospective study to evaluate differences in IVA-CPT and P300 indexes using student t test. These tools' accuracy in identifying ADHD patients was evaluated using receiver operating characteristic curve analysis. Additionally, the correlation between P300 and IVA-CPT in ADHD patients was evaluated using Pearson correlation analysis.

Compared with healthy volunteers, ADHD patients showed longer latency and lower amplitude, and had lower scores of IVA-CPT (P<0.01). There was no significant difference of latency, amplitude, and area below the amplitude of the P300 wave and in the score of IVA-CPT for age and gender within-ADHD groups (P>0.05). Moreover, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve showed high accuracy of P300 and IVA-CPT in identifying ADHD patients. Furthermore, both P300 index and IVA-CPT had high accuracy and performance in identification of ADHDin, ADHDhi, and ADHDcom. However, for different subtypes of ADHD, no significant differences were observed of ROC curves between subgroups (P>0.05). In addition, the performance in IVA-CPT was positively correlated with the amplitude, and negatively correlated with the latency of P300.

These results support the discriminant validity of P300 and IVA-CPT in distinguishing ADHD patients, providing a theoretical basis for P300 and IVA-CPT testing in the clinical diagnosis of ADHD.