People who are diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in childhood appear to inherit differences in brain structure that persist in adulthood, according to a recent US study.
F. Xavier Castellanos, a professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at New York University in the US, said that although the majority of people who had ADHD in childhood improved in adulthood were able to improve, the nature of their challenges did not change.
The researchers also found that some people's brains became even more characteristic of ADHD as they aged.
Symptoms of ADHD include not being able to sit still even for short periods, daydreaming, and an inability to pay attention to most things.
Previous studies have shown that children with ADHD have less brain volume than children who do not have the disorder, especially where specific brain regions are concerned.
The areas of the brain that regulate being able to pay attention to things, as well as being able to regulate emotion, are both reduced in size.
Using a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan, the researchers were able to conclude that the outer layer of the brain was significantly thinner in people who had ADHD as children.
Even in people whose ADHD symptoms were no longer present in adulthood, the researchers saw the same thinning of brain matter.
Castellanos said that, in people whose symptoms still presented a problem in adulthood, the thinning was particularly noticeable.
He said that the areas where there was thinning seemed to have to do with top-down control of attention and the regulation of attention, such as when people managed to put things out of their mind in order to continue concentrating on something else.
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