Families affected by ADHD carry inheritable structural, functional brain connectivity

A recent study published in JAMA Psychiatry used resting-state fMRI to identify inheritable structural and functional connectivity features associated with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

“The goal here was to characterize the phenotypes so basically characterize the brain connections both structural and functional, and then from there we can look at the genetics of ADHD or genetics of these phenotypes, so to have a better understanding of the mechanisms of ADHD, so maybe in the future we can have better targets for information,” said Gustavo Sudre, PhD, of the National Human Genome Research Institute.

Sudre and his colleagues evaluated 24 multigenerational extended families and 52 nuclear families. Resting-state functional MRI was used to measure functional connectivity, whereas, diffusion tensor imaging of white matter tract microstructure was used to measure functional connectivity.

Along with characterizing the phenotypes, the team of researchers found it fitting to study what other advances could be made.   

“It would be important to see if, using these features, we can somehow predict who would have ADHD as an adult,” said Sudre. "That’s one thing that many people don’t know, that a lot of the kids who have ADHD still have ADHD as adults, about 30 percent of them, so if we can figure out which of these kids are more at risk for ADHD as adults, then that would also be very credible."

From the study, researchers found that there were several structural and functional connections are also inheritable and associated with symptoms of ADHD.

"In addition, shared genetic factors account for some phenotypic correlations between functional and structural connections. Such work helps to prioritize the facets of the brain's connectivity for future genomic studies," the authors wrote.