Drexel CoAS Research Day, May 24, 2023
Poster Presentation
Title: Evaluating the Differences in Cortical Thickness in Adolescents with ADHD
Abstract: Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a common neuropsychiatric disorder that is not completely understood and is difficult to differentiate. Neuroimaging methods, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), may aid in understanding the brains of patients with ADHD. Cortical thickness, the width of gray matter, is being explored as a diagnostic method for multiple psychiatric and neurological conditions. Cortical thickness can be derived from specific brain regions associated with certain symptoms of ADHD, such as impulsivity and inattention. Resting-state functional fMRI scans were obtained from neurotypical controls (n=113) and from patients with ADHD (n=66) between the ages of 8-15. The following functional networks in the brain, each of which has been linked to impulsivity and inattention, served as the focus of the analysis: the default mode network (DMN), the salience network (SN), the dorsal attention network (DAN), and the frontoparietal control network (FPCN), which is further split into two networks FPCN-A and FPCN-B. Standard fMRI preprocessing was conducted to obtain the desired networks. T1-weighted images from multiple subjects were used to create a scanner and diagnosis-specific template images using Advanced Normalization Tools (ANTs), after which we created brain masks. We then produced template brain segmentation and cortical thickness maps. After extracting the functional parcellation within the above networks from each subject’s data, we extracted the mean cortical thickness from each region of interest. We conducted an Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) to quantify the difference in mean cortical thickness between the neurotypical subjects and subjects with ADHD across the aforementioned networks. The preliminary analysis showed significant differences for the following networks: SN, FPCN-A, FPCN-B, DMN, and DAN.
Poster Presentation
Title: Evaluating the Differences in Cortical Thickness in Adolescents with ADHD
Abstract: Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a common neuropsychiatric disorder that is not completely understood and is difficult to differentiate. Neuroimaging methods, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), may aid in understanding the brains of patients with ADHD. Cortical thickness, the width of gray matter, is being explored as a diagnostic method for multiple psychiatric and neurological conditions. Cortical thickness can be derived from specific brain regions associated with certain symptoms of ADHD, such as impulsivity and inattention. Resting-state functional fMRI scans were obtained from neurotypical controls (n=113) and from patients with ADHD (n=66) between the ages of 8-15. The following functional networks in the brain, each of which has been linked to impulsivity and inattention, served as the focus of the analysis: the default mode network (DMN), the salience network (SN), the dorsal attention network (DAN), and the frontoparietal control network (FPCN), which is further split into two networks FPCN-A and FPCN-B. Standard fMRI preprocessing was conducted to obtain the desired networks. T1-weighted images from multiple subjects were used to create a scanner and diagnosis-specific template images using Advanced Normalization Tools (ANTs), after which we created brain masks. We then produced template brain segmentation and cortical thickness maps. After extracting the functional parcellation within the above networks from each subject’s data, we extracted the mean cortical thickness from each region of interest. We conducted an Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) to quantify the difference in mean cortical thickness between the neurotypical subjects and subjects with ADHD across the aforementioned networks. The preliminary analysis showed significant differences for the following networks: SN, FPCN-A, FPCN-B, DMN, and DAN.