Skip to main content
Article
Neural substrates of impaired sensorimotor timing in adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder
Biological Psychiatry (2010)
  • Eve M. Valera, PhD
  • Rebecca M. C. Spencer, University of Massachusetts - Amherst
  • Thomas A. Zeffero, MD, PhD
  • Nikos Makris, MD, PhD
  • Thomas J. Spencer, MD
  • Stephen V. Faraone, PhD
  • Joseph Biederman, MD
  • Larry J. Seidman, PhD
Abstract
Background—Timing abilities are critical to the successful management of everyday activities and personal safety, and timing abnormalities have been argued to be fundamental to impulsiveness, a core symptom of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Despite substantial evidence of timing deficits in ADHD youth, only two studies have explicitly examined timing in ADHD adults, and only at the supra-second time-scale. Also, the neural substrates of these deficits are largely unknown for both youth and adults with ADHD. The present study examined sub-second sensorimotor timing and its neural substrates in ADHD adults. Methods—Using fMRI, we examined paced and unpaced finger tapping in a sample of 20 unmedicated adults with ADHD and 19 controls comparable on age, sex and estimated-IQ. The blood oxygenation level-dependent contrast response was used to estimate task-related neural activity. Results—Behavioral data showed no between-group differences in mean tapping rates but greater within-subject variability in tap-to-tap intervals for ADHD adults relative to controls. Importantly, ADHD adults had greater clock rather than motor variability, consistent with a central timing locus for the atypical movements. The imaging results demonstrated that, relative to controls, ADHD adults showed less activity in a number of regions associated with sensorimotor timing, including prefrontal and precentral gyri, basal ganglia, cerebellum, inferior parietal lobule, superior temporal gyri and insula. Conclusions—Our findings show that sub-second timing abnormalities in ADHD youth persist into adulthood and suggest that abnormalities in the temporal structure of behavior observed in ADHD adults result from atypical function of cortico-cerebellar and cortico-striatal timing systems.
Keywords
  • ADHD,
  • fMRI,
  • timing,
  • cerebellum,
  • frontal cortex,
  • basal ganglia
Disciplines
Publication Date
August 15, 2010
Publisher Statement
DOI: 10.1016

This is the author's manuscript harvested from PubMed. The published version is available at http://www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com/article/S0006-3223%2810%2900472-5/fulltext

Citation Information
Eve M. Valera, Rebecca M. C. Spencer, Thomas A. Zeffero, Nikos Makris, et al.. "Neural substrates of impaired sensorimotor timing in adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder" Biological Psychiatry Vol. 68 Iss. 4 (2010)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/rebecca_spencer/8/