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Sensory Modulation Disorder and its Neural Circuitry in Adults with ADHD: A Pilot Study

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Abstract

Compared to healthy controls (HCs), individuals with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) exhibit more symptoms of sensory processing disorder (SPD), which is associated with difficulties in educational and social activities. Most studies examining comorbid SPD-ADHD have been conducted with children and have not explored relations to brain volumes. In this pilot study, we assessed a subtype of SPD, sensory modulation disorder (SMD), and its relation to select brain volumes in adults with ADHD. We administered part of the Sensory Processing 3-Dimensions Scale (SP3D) to assess subtypes of SMD and collected structural imaging scans from 25 adults with ADHD and 29 healthy controls (HCs). Relative to HCs, subjects with ADHD scored higher on sensory craving (SC) and sensory under-responsivity (SUR) subscales. Although sensory over-responsivity (SOR) was marginally higher, this was no longer true when accounting for co-occurring anxiety. In individuals with ADHD, both SC and SUR were positively associated with amygdalar volume, SUR was also positively associated with striatal volume, whereas SOR was negatively associated with posterior ventral diencephalon volume. These preliminary findings suggest that SC and SUR may be characteristic of ADHD while SOR may be driven by co-occurring anxiety. Because different modalities were associated with different brain volumes, our findings also suggest that the modalities may involve unique neural circuits, but with a partial overlap between SC and SUR. These pilot data provide support for conducting studies examining SMD in larger samples of adults with ADHD to determine reproducibility, applicability and implications of these findings.

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Abbreviations

ADHD:

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

BG:

Basal Ganglia

SC:

Sensory Craving

SP3D:

Sensory Processing 3-Dimensions

SMD:

Sensory Modulation Disorder

SOR:

Sensory Over-Responsivity

SPD:

Sensory Processing Disorder

SP:

Sensory Profile

SUR:

Sensory Under-Responsivity

VDC:

Ventral Diencephalon

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Acknowledgments

We thank all of the subjects who participated in this study and Clay Riley, Zhi Li, Aaron Kucyi and Michael Hove for assistance with data acquisition. This work was performed at Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital.

Funding

This work was supported by grants from the National Institute of Health R01 HD067744-01A1 (to EMV) and the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, NCRR P41RR14075 & P41 EB015896. The study was also supported by the following grants to AC: National Natural Science Foundation of China, grant 81,401,131, China Postdoctoral Science Foundation, grant 2015 M572049, and China State Scholarship fund, 201,506,225,013.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA, USA

    Noor Adra

  2. Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, USA

    Noor Adra, Aihua Cao, Nikos Makris & Eve M. Valera

  3. Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA

    Noor Adra & Nikos Makris

  4. Department of Pediatrics, Qilu hospital of Shandong University, Jinan, 250012, Shandong, China

    Aihua Cao

  5. Brain Science Research Institute, Shandong University, Jinan, China

    Aihua Cao

  6. Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Nikos Makris & Eve M. Valera

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  1. Noor Adra
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  2. Aihua Cao
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  3. Nikos Makris
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  4. Eve M. Valera
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Eve M. Valera.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee (include name of committee + reference number) and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Adra, N., Cao, A., Makris, N. et al. Sensory Modulation Disorder and its Neural Circuitry in Adults with ADHD: A Pilot Study. Brain Imaging and Behavior 15, 930–940 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-020-00302-w

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