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Clinical Investigations |
1 Department of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
2 Department of Radiology, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
3 The Community/Academia Coalition, Mountain View, California
4 Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts
5 Division of Nuclear Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine, Palo Alto, California
| ABSTRACT |
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Key Words: methylphenidate statistical parametric mapping SPECT attention deficit hyperactivity disorder motor cortex anterior cingulate cortex
| INTRODUCTION |
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Most ADHD patients show symptomatic response to methylphenidate (MPH) and other psychostimulants; thus, understanding the mechanism of their effect is critical to understanding the biology of ADHD (4,5). The activity of MPH on the molecular level is linked to its competition with dopamine on the dopamine transporter, but the neurophysiologic mechanism of its therapeutic effect is not fully understood (6). The neurophysiologic effects of MPH in ADHD are heterogeneous and encompass the prefrontal cortex, sensory cortex, motor cortex (MC), anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), parietal cortex, striatum, and thalamus (712). The reasons for the variability across studies may include differences in techniques of image acquisition and analysis, subject populations, treatment status, and diagnostic criteria. It has been suggested that MPH may specifically correct the striatal activation deficits in ADHD; however, indirect evidence indicates that the behavioral effects of stimulants are not specific (9,13).
Although the MC and ACC have important roles in locomotor activity and attention, respectively, few studies have assessed whether these regions are directly affected by MPH treatment. The rationale for such an investigation is supported by dopaminergic agonist- and antagonist-induced increases and decreases in intracortical inhibition of the MC and premotor cortex (14). Moreover, in a preclinical study, MPH treatment was associated with reduced blood flow in the MC (15). With humans, similar results were obtained in some studies (7,8,11). Hence, the decrease in MC activity after MPH in ADHD may suggest an additional mechanism for the therapeutic action of MPH, that is, enhancement of intracortical inhibition (16).
To further understand the neurophysiologic mechanism of MPH action, we studied a cohort of ADHD patients when they were taking MPH (the "on-MPH condition") and when they were not taking MPH (the "off-MPH condition"). Using the 99mTc-labeled blood flow tracer ethylcysteinate dimer (ECD) and SPECT and statistical parametric mapping (SPM), we performed an automated within- and across-subject voxel-by-voxel analysis of the entire brain (17). 99mTc-ECD is trapped within the cytoplasm, reaching a steady state less than 1 min after injection and reflecting average regional neuronal activity over this period (18). Despite relatively low spatial resolution, SPECT has cost and availability advantages over PET and may lack the selection bias against severely hyperactive subjects, who could be excluded from the functional MRI (fMRI) datasets because of motion artifacts. Based on the results of prior studies, our primary hypothesis was that discontinuation of chronic MPH treatment would affect regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) in the prefrontal cortex, the MC and supplementary MC, the ACC, and the corpus striatum.
| MATERIALS AND METHODS |
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Image Acquisition
Each subject had 2 imaging sessions 13 wk apart: one in the on-MPH condition and another in the off-MPH condition. The order of the scans was counterbalanced in both groups. For the on-MPH scan, the ADHD patients received their usual prescribed dose of MPH (range, 1030 mg) 2 h before the imaging session and the controls received a single 10-mg dose. For the off-MPH scan, MPH was withheld for 36 h before the scan for the ADHD patients. The off-MPH condition in the ADHD patients was 36 h off MPH after an average of 6 wk on the drug, whereas in the controls, the off-MPH condition was 36 h after a single dose.
Activation Task
To maintain a uniform activation state, subjects began performing a "go/no-go" task 2.5 min before administration of the radiopharmaceutical. We used the stimulus-controlled version of the task, as described by Vaidya et al. (9). Briefly, it consisted of 6 alternating go or no-go blocks lasting 25 s each. A block is a 25-s interval that begins with task instructions requiring action or inaction in response to a consonant letter displayed on the screen ("press mouse for all letters" for the go blocks; "do not press mouse for X" for the no-go blocks) followed by a consonant letter on each trial. X was not presented and C occurred on 50% of the go trials. X occurred on 50% of the trials in the no-go block. Other letters were not repeated in either block. Task performance data have not been recorded and were unavailable for subsequent analysis.
Imaging Session Procedure
After intravenous line placement for tracer injection and a go/no-go task practice session, the subjects performed the task using a mouse-operated desktop computer (Macintosh Quadra; Apple Computer, Inc., Cupertino, CA) in a quiet semidark room. The radiopharmaceutical was injected 2.5 min after the beginning of the 5-min task. After completion of the task, the subjects were placed supine on a stretcher and 20 to 30 min later were transferred to the scanner for imaging.
Radiopharmaceutical and Instrumentation
An age-adjusted dose (average, 480 MBq [13 mCi]) of 99mTc-ECD (Neurolite; Dupont, Billerica, MA) was administered, and the subject continued to perform the go/no-go task for an additional 2.5 min. Images were recorded using a triple-head scanner (MULTISPECT 3; Siemens, Des Plaines, IL) with a resolution of 8 mm in full width at half maximum (FWHM), high-resolution parallel-hole collimators, a photopeak centered at 140 keV with a 15% window, a rate of 22 s per frame with 3° increments, 40 frames per detector (a total of 120 frames), and a 128 x 128 matrix. Data were recorded using a dedicated computer system (ICON; Siemens) and were reconstructed using filtered backprojection with a low-pass Butterworth filter, order 6, at 0.55 cycles per centimeter. Images were corrected for attenuation using Changs first-order method.
Data Analysis
Image acquisition and analysis were performed by a team that was unaware of the clinical data. Images from each subject were aligned to each other using a rigid-body coregistration algorithm. After realignment, images were normalized to a standard stereotactic template (17,22) using affine transformations and nonlinear image warping (7 x 8 x 7 basis functions) (23). The normalized images were smoothed by being convolved with an isotropic FWHM 12-mm gaussian kernel. This step reduced the effects of image noise and conditioned the data for subsequent statistical tests performed using SPM99 (Wellcome Department of Cognitive Neurology, London, U.K.) implemented in MATLAB (The MathWorks, Inc., Natick, MA). Groups of images were compared with voxel-by-voxel paired t tests within SPM99 (24), producing statistical parametric maps of the t statistic of the rCBF differences between on-MPH and off-MPH scans within and between ADHD and control groups. Also, changes in rCBF resulting from MPH administration in the ADHD patients were compared with changes in the controls to detect significant changes in the ADHD patients over and above those in the controls (the "difference of differences"). Statistically significant differences between sets of data were assessed at each voxel with a threshold of t = 3.42, P < 0.001. To correct for correlated multiple comparisons, clusters of voxels that survived this threshold were assessed further using the theory of random gaussian fields (25), which calculated the significance of clusters on the basis of their peak height and spatial extent (150 voxels, P < 0.05).
| RESULTS |
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| DISCUSSION |
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A recent transcranial magnetic stimulation study suggested that MPH might also have a direct inhibitory effect on the MC by enhancing intracortical inhibition (14,16). This mechanism is also consistent with our findings.
Our data do not directly confirm the findings of a recent study by Vaidya et al. (9), which relied on a cohort of participants and an activation paradigm similar to ours. This study used blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) fMRI to examine the effects of the task and MPH on brain activity. The findings included increased prefrontal activity on MPH in both ADHD and control groups and increased striatal activity only in the ADHD group. The value of direct comparison of our findings with Vaidya et al. is limited by the differences in study variables, statistical approach, and temporal resolution of SPECT and BOLD fMRI. Nevertheless, our findings could be reconciled with the prefrontostriatal dysfunction hypothesis in ADHD since both the MC and the ACC receive inhibitory prefrontostriatal input (30).
The ACC has a role in multiple aspects of attention, such as irrelevant stimulus filtering and error monitoring (31). The ACC is functionally subdivided into affective and cognitive divisions (3,32). The affective division includes BA 25, BA 33, and rostral part of BA 24; has extensive connections with the limbic system; and is involved in affective functions such as emotional learning, assigning emotional valence to stimuli, and maternal-infant interactions. The cognitive division includes BA 24 and BA 32 and is engaged both in response selection and in cognitively demanding information processing. Deficient processing of incoming information is thought to underlie the inattention and distractibility in ADHD (28). Children with ADHD perform below normal levels on tests of executive function such as the continuous activation task, the go/no-go task, or the Stroop color test, which require functions involving the ACC (9,33). The effect of MPH on ACC activity has not been studied with a technique and paradigm comparable to ours; however, there is indirect evidence that ACC function is abnormal in ADHD patients. Compared with controls, ADHD patients had inadequate ACC activation during a range of tests of executive function, such as the continuous activation task and the Stroop color test (3). In an imaging study on adults, Bush et al. (3) found that ADHD patients, but not controls, performing the Stroop color test failed to activate the ACC. On the basis of the task involved and the location of activation in controls (Talairach coordinates: -3, 21, and 37; BA 32), Bush et al. assigned the location of the activation deficit in their ADHD sample to the cognitive division of the ACC. The Talairach location of our finding (Table 2) overlaps that reported by Bush et al.; however, because of the low resolution of SPECT and the potential affective impact of the go/no-go task (frustration and anxiety), which can be greater in ADHD patients who are off MPH, we cannot assign our finding to the cognitive division of the ACC with certainty. We hypothesize that in the absence of MPH, higher ACC blood flow reflects a compensatory increase in task-related cognitive effort. Although we addressed some of the methodologic issues of ADHD-imaging studies by using an automated analysis of whole-brain images and a uniform active baseline activation state in a sizable sample, our results should be interpreted with several caveats. We studied an all-male cohort both because we wanted to achieve a clinically homogeneous sample and because of the difficulty in recruiting girls from a clinic-referred population (4,34). Therefore, our results may not apply to girls with ADHD. The duration of drug discontinuation was dictated by the lack of clinical evidence of tolerance to MPH, indicating that a period exceeding 5 MPH half-lives should render our subjects free of MPH effects (35). In contrast, the evidence of sensitization and tolerance to cocaine, which shares many pharmacologic properties with MPH, indicates that this issue requires further investigation (6,36). If tolerance to MPH exists, 36 h may not be enough for the striatum and the prefrontal cortex to revert to their pre-MPH state, explaining why we did not find an MPH effect there (28,3739). Moreover, the effect of MPH withdrawal may obscure the effects of ADHD on the off-MPH rCBF pattern for both the location and the magnitude of differences between the off- and on-MPH scans. Thus, if there were withdrawal effects on rCBF beyond 36 h of abstinence, the effects of withdrawal could not be separated from the effects of ADHD. The MPH administration schedule in our study was also constrained by the inability to administer chronic MPH to the controls or to discontinue MPH for more than 36 h in the ADHD patients. Schedules of MPH administration in our 2 groups are comparable only under an assumption of no MPH effect beyond 36 h. The small sample size further limits the interpretability of the negative findings in the control group. Difficulties in recruiting healthy young children for brain imaging studies involving radiopharmaceuticals suggests that alternative methods, such as transcranial magnetic stimulation and fMRI, should be considered when studying these populations (16,34). Finally, our results were for a group, and no claims can be made about their predictive value in individuals. Recent advances in ligand design and image analysis indicate that SPECT studies of ADHD could move beyond blood flow to the imaging of dopamine, norepinephrine, and 5-hydroxytryptophane transporter ligands and pixel-based discriminant mapping methods, permitting sensitive and valid statistical comparison of individual patients with the control dataset (40,41).
| CONCLUSION |
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| ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
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| FOOTNOTES |
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For correspondence or reprints contact: Daniel D. Langleben, MD, Treatment Research Center, 3900 Chestnut St., Philadelphia, PA 19104.
E-mail: langlebe{at}mail.med.upenn.edu
| REFERENCES |
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