Brain Matures Late in Kids With ADHD

Study shows a developmental lag in a certain brain area in kids with ADHD.

ByABC News
November 12, 2007, 4:44 PM

Nov. 12, 2007— -- Kids with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder lag three years behind their peers when it comes to brain development, a new study suggests.

The study is the first to quantify the differences in brain development between children with ADHD and their non-ADHD counterparts.

"In children with ADHD, the brain matures in a normal pattern but is delayed by three years in some regions, when compared to children without the disorder," said the study's lead investigator, Dr. Philip Shaw, a child psychiatrist at the National Institute of Mental Health.

According to the National Resource Center on ADHD, the condition is the most common neurodevelopment disorder of childhood. It is present in 5 percent to 8 percent of school age children, with symptoms persisting into adulthood in as many as 60 percent of cases.

It is most commonly diagnosed in kids but can remain undiagnosed until adolescence, and even adulthood. Children afflicted with ADHD often have difficulty concentrating in school, engage in disruptive behavior during class, and are "fidgety."

The new research, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, looked at brain development in kids with ADHD, using brain imaging techniques.

With sophisticated magnetic resonance imaging scans, Shaw and his colleagues looked at 40,000 different sites of the brain cortex in 446 children and measured brain thickness a marker of brain maturation.

They found that in kids with ADHD, a certain part of the brain specifically, a region in the front called the prefrontal cortex matured approximately three years later, around the age of 10½ compared to kids without ADHD.

These areas of the brain are responsible for focusing attention and suppressing inappropriate thoughts and actions things that are disrupted in people with ADHD.

Researchers also found that the part of the brain called the motor cortex responsible for making different movements in the body matured faster in kids with ADHD. The authors theorized that both of these findings together might be responsible for the restlessness and fidgety symptoms commonly seen in ADHD.