Impaired Resolution of Perceptual Interference as an Endophenotype of ADHD

描述（由研究者提供）：注意缺陷多动障碍是最常见的精神健康障碍之一。最近的估计表明，它影响了2-4%的成年人，其后果包括学术和职业失败，人际交往困难和寻求刺激行为的生活史。发展我们对ADHD的科学理解的一个关键挑战是缺乏症状严重程度的客观衡量标准。这些措施将为基础研究项目提供有价值的工具，这些项目要求通过测量疾病前兆的更微妙影响（例如，遗传或环境因素）比症状检查表可能。我们建议调查的心理物理过程估计个人的能力，解决visaul干扰。我们的初步数据显示，ADHD受试者有一个严重的缺陷，在高干扰显示器中区分目标，即使他们表现出正常的性能与同样具有挑战性的显示器，不包含分散注意力的刺激。这些数据表明，ADHD受试者有一个强大的和选择性的缺陷，在解决知觉干扰。我们提出了一个全面的评估的完整性视觉干扰分辨率的特点ADHD和控制人群，样本量足够大，仔细检查共病障碍和ADHD亚型的影响。此外，我们将使用我们的实验室内开发的程序，使一个有选择性的操纵的程度，干扰是解决在参加的地点。这些任务，结合功能磁共振成像和事件相关的大脑电记录，将提供一个深入的分析行为和神经特性的干扰分辨率在多动症的科目，这可能有助于确定潜在的认知障碍，导致严重中断解决干扰在这个人口。最后，鉴于大多数ADHD的理论表明注意功能的模态独立缺陷，我们将研究ADHD受试者是否有类似的困难，在听觉领域的干扰的分辨率。我们最初的研究将集中在听觉感知空间内的哪些维度（即，空间的、时间的或光谱的）提供对确定视觉域中的干涉的空间维度的最佳模拟。

DESCRIPTION (provided by investigator): Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is amongst the most commonly diagnosed mental health disorders. Recent estimates suggest that it affects 2-4% of adults, with consequences that include life histories of academic and occupational failure, interpersonal difficulties and stimulus seeking behaviors. One key challenge for developing our scientific understanding of ADHD is a paucity of objective measures of symptom severity. Such measures would provide valuable tools for basic research programs that call for continuous and quantitative measurements of the core deficits in ADHD subjects (endophenotypes) by allowing measurements of more subtle influences of disease precursors (e.g., genetic or environmental factors) than is possible with symptom checklists. We propose to investigate a psychophysical procedure for estimating an individual's ability to resolve visaul interference. Our preliminary data reveal that ADHD subjects have a severe deficit in discriminating targets in high interference displays, even though they show normal performance with equally challenging displays that do not contain distracting stimuli. These data suggest that ADHD subjects have a strong and selective deficit in the resolution of perceptual interference. We propose a comprehensive assessment of the integrity of visual interference resolution in well characterized ADHD and control popultions, with sample sizes large enough for a careful examination of the influence of co-morbid disorders and ADHD subtypes. In addition, we will use procedures developed within our lab that enable a selective manipulation of the degree to which interference is resolved at attended locations. These tasks, in conjunction with fMRI and event-related electrical recordings of the brain, will provide an in-depth analysis of the behavioral and neural characteristics for interference resolution in ADHD subjects, which may help to identify the underlying cognitive impairments that cause the severe disruptions in resolving interference in this population. Finally, given that most theories of ADHD suggest a modality independent deficit in attentional functions, we will examine whether ADHD subjects have similar difficulties with the resolution of interference in the auditory domain. Our initial studies will focus on the basic question of which dimensions within auditory perceptual space (i.e., spatial, temporal or spectral) provide the best analog to the spatial dimension that determines interference in the visual domain.