RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Adult patients with ADHD differ from healthy controls in implicit, but not explicit, emotion regulation
JF Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience
JO J Psychiatry Neurosci
FD Canadian Medical Association
SP 340
OP 349
DO 10.1503/jpn.180139
VO 44
IS 5
A1 Materna, Lukas
A1 Wiesner, Christian Dirk
A1 Shushakova, Anna
A1 Trieloff, Julia
A1 Weber, Nathalia
A1 Engell, Alva
A1 Schubotz, Ricarda I.
A1 Bauer, Jochen
A1 Pedersen, Anya
A1 Ohrmann, Patricia
YR 2019
UL http://jpn.ca/content/44/5/340.abstract
AB Background: There is increasing evidence that people with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are impaired in emotion regulation, but psychophysiological and functional MRI data on emotion processing in adult patients with ADHD are scarce. We investigated the neural correlates of reappraisal as one of the most efficient emotion-regulation strategies.Methods: We included 30 adult patients with ADHD and 35 healthy controls in our study. We applied a well-established reappraisal paradigm in functional MRI and assessed behavioural emotion-regulation strategies with standardized questionnaires. We hypothesized that patients with ADHD would demonstrate impaired reappraisal related to reduced activations in the frontoparietal cognitive control network.Results: Despite our hypothesis, we found no significant activation differences in the neural reappraisal network between patients with ADHD and controls. As well, both groups revealed similar reappraisal success on the immediate behavioural ratings in the scanner. Interestingly, patients with ADHD revealed significantly increased activations in the dorsal and ventral anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) compared with controls when viewing negative > neutral pictures. These ACC activations were significantly correlated with the prevalence of habitual use of reappraisal in patients with ADHD only.Limitations: Patients withdrew medication only 24 hours before the experiment; we investigated negative, but not positive, emotion processing and regulation.Conclusion: Although emotion dysregulation is regarded as a core symptom of ADHD, explicit reappraisal does not seem to be impaired in adult patients. However, increased activation of the ACC implies stronger implicit emotion regulation induced by negative stimuli. This might be explained by emotional hyperresponsivity in patients with ADHD compared with controls.