Open Access
17 December 2019 Exploring attentive task-based connectivity for screening attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder children: a functional near-infrared spectroscopy study
Stephanie Sutoko, Yukifumi Monden, Tatsuya Tokuda, Takahiro Ikeda, Masako Nagashima, Tsukasa Funane, Hiroki Sato, Masashi Kiguchi, Atsushi Maki, Takanori Yamagata, Ippeita Dan
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Abstract

Connectivity impairment has frequently been associated with the pathophysiology of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Although the connectivity of the resting state has mainly been studied, we expect the transition between baseline and task may also be impaired in ADHD children. Twenty-three typically developing (i.e., control) and 36 disordered (ADHD and autism-comorbid ADHD) children were subjected to connectivity analysis. Specifically, they performed an attention task, visual oddball, while their brains were measured by functional near-infrared spectroscopy. The results of the measurements revealed three key findings. First, the control group maintained attentive connectivity, even in the baseline interval. Meanwhile, the disordered group showed enhanced bilateral intra- and interhemispheric connectivities while performing the task. However, right intrahemispheric connectivity was found to be weaker than those for the control group. Second, connectivity and activation characteristics might not be positively correlated with each other. In our previous results, disordered children lacked activation in the right middle frontal gyrus. However, within region connectivity of the right middle frontal gyrus was relatively strong in the baseline interval and significantly increased in the task interval. Third, the connectivity-based biomarker performed better than the activation-based biomarker in terms of screening. Activation and connectivity features were independently optimized and cross validated to obtain the best performing threshold-based classifier. The effectiveness of connectivity features, which brought significantly higher training accuracy than the optimum activation features, was confirmed (88% versus 76%). The optimum screening features were characterized by two trends: (1) strong connectivities of right frontal, left frontal, and left parietal lobes and (2) weak connectivities of left frontal, left parietal, and right parietal lobes in the control group. We conclude that the attentive task-based connectivity effectively shows the difference between control and disordered children and may represent pathological characteristics to be feasibly implemented as a supporting tool for clinical screening.

CC BY: © The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI.
Stephanie Sutoko, Yukifumi Monden, Tatsuya Tokuda, Takahiro Ikeda, Masako Nagashima, Tsukasa Funane, Hiroki Sato, Masashi Kiguchi, Atsushi Maki, Takanori Yamagata, and Ippeita Dan "Exploring attentive task-based connectivity for screening attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder children: a functional near-infrared spectroscopy study," Neurophotonics 6(4), 045013 (17 December 2019). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.NPh.6.4.045013
Received: 2 July 2019; Accepted: 20 November 2019; Published: 17 December 2019
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CITATIONS
Cited by 9 scholarly publications.
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KEYWORDS
Remote sensing

Neurophotonics

Functional magnetic resonance imaging

Near infrared spectroscopy

Visualization

Brain

Feature selection

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