Background
We sought to assess the relationship between response inhibition and working memory
in adult patients with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and neurosurgical
patients with frontal lobe damage.
Methods
The stop-signal reaction time (SSRT) test and a spatial working memory (SWM) task
were administered to 20 adult patients with ADHD and a group of matched controls.
The same tasks were administered to 21 patients with lesions to right frontal cortex
and 19 patients with left frontal lesions.
Results
The SSRT test, but not choice reaction time, was significantly associated with search
errors on the SWM task in both the adult ADHD and right frontal patients. In the right
frontal patients, impaired performance on both variables was correlated with the volume
of damage to the inferior frontal gyrus.
Conclusions
Response inhibition and working memory impairments in ADHD may stem from a common
pathologic process rather than being distinct deficits. Such pathology could relate
to right frontal-cortex abnormalities in ADHD, consistent with prior reports, as well
as with the demonstration here of a significant association between SSRT and SWM in
right frontal patients.
Key Words
To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
Purchase one-time access:
Academic & Personal: 24 hour online accessCorporate R&D Professionals: 24 hour online accessOne-time access price info
- For academic or personal research use, select 'Academic and Personal'
- For corporate R&D use, select 'Corporate R&D Professionals'
Subscribe:
Subscribe to Biological PsychiatryAlready a print subscriber? Claim online access
Already an online subscriber? Sign in
Register: Create an account
Institutional Access: Sign in to ScienceDirect
References
- Neurobiology of executive functions: Catecholamine influences on prefrontal cortical functions.Biol Psychiatry. 2005; 57: 1377-1384
- Methylphenidate improves response inhibition in adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.Biol Psychiatry. 2003; 54: 1465-1468
- Stop-signal inhibition disrupted by damage to right inferior frontal gyrus in humans.Nat Neurosci. 2003; 6: 115-116
- The cognitive neuroscience of response inhibition: Relevance for genetic research in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.Biol Psychiatry. 2005; 57: 1285-1292
- Cortical and subcortical contributions to stop signal response inhibition: Role of the subthalamic nucleus.J Neurosci. 2006; 26: 2424-2433
- Horse-race model simulations of the stop-signal procedure.Acta Psychol (Amst). 2003; 112: 105-142
- Behavioral inhibition, sustained attention, and executive functions: Constructing a unifying theory of ADHD.Psychol Bull. 1997; 121: 65-94
- Disentangling deficits in adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2005; 62: 1129-1136
- Spatial normalization of brain images with focal lesions using cost function masking.Neuroimage. 2001; 14: 486-500
- Implication of right frontostriatal circuitry in response inhibition and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 1997; 36: 374-383
- Quantitative brain magnetic resonance imaging in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1996; 53: 607-616
- Characterizing cognition in ADHD: Beyond executive dysfunction.Trends Cogn Sci. 2006; 10: 117-123
- Neuroscience of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: The search for endophenotypes.Nat Rev Neurosci. 2002; 3: 617-628
- Executive “brake failure” following deactivation of human frontal lobe.J Cogn Neurosci. 2006; 18: 444-455
- The contributions of lesion laterality and lesion volume to decision-making impairment following frontal lobe damage.Neuropsychologia. 2003; 41: 1474-1483
- Perseveration and strategy in a novel spatial self-ordered sequencing task for nonhuman primates: Effects of excitotoxic lesions and dopamine depletions of the prefrontal cortex.J Cogn Neurosci. 1998; 10: 332-354
- Cognitive functioning in bipolar patients receiving lamotrigine: Preliminary results.J Clin Psychopharmacol. 2006; 26: 178-181
- Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI): Administrative, Scoring and Procedural Manual. 3rd ed. National Computer Systems, Minneapolis, MN1993
- Adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: Neuropsychological correlates and clinical presentation.Brain Cogn. 2001; 46: 114-121
- Impaired spatial working memory in adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: Comparisons with performance in adults with borderline personality disorder and in control subjects.Acta Psychiatr Scand. 2004; 110: 45-54
- Magnetic resonance imaging of boys with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and their unaffected siblings.J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2004; 43: 332-340
- Neuropsychological assessment of response inhibition in adults with ADHD.J Clin Exp Neuropsychol. 2001; 23: 362-371
- Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in adults: An overview.Biol Psychiatry. 2000; 48: 9-20
- Volumetric MRI analysis comparing subjects having attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder with normal controls.Neurology. 1997; 48: 589-601
- The diagnosis and neuropsychological assessment of adult attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder.Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2001; 931: 148-171
- Are there cognitive subtypes in adult attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder?.J Nerv Ment Dis. 1998; 186: 776-781
- Statistical Methods for Psychology. Wadsworth, Belmont, CA1997
- Executive function and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: Stimulant medication and better executive function performance in children.Psychol Med. 1999; 29: 527-538
- A unified account of cognitive impairments following frontal lobe damage: The role of working memory in complex, organized behavior.J Exp Psychol Gen. 1993; 122: 411-428
- Neuropsychological testing in adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: A pilot study.Int J Neurosci. 1998; 96: 225-235
- A meta-analytic review of stopping performance in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: Deficient inhibitory motor control?.J Abnorm Psychol. 2005; 114: 216-222
- Executive control problems in childhood psychopathology: Stop signal studies of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.in: Monsell S. Driver J. Control of Cognitive Processes: Attention and Performance XVIII. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA2000: 653-677
- On the ability to inhibit thought and action: A users’ guide to the stop signal paradigm.in: Dagenbach D. Carr T.H. Inhibitory Processes in Attention, Memory and Language. Academic Press, New York1994: 189-239
- Neuropsychological performance of adults with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): Diagnostic classification estimates for measures of frontal lobe/executive functioning.J Int Neuropsychol Soc. 1999; 5: 222-233
- A meta-analysis of working memory impairments in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2005; 44: 377-384
- Characteristic neurocognitive profile associated with adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.Psychol Med. 2004; 34: 681-692
- Clinical, cognitive, and neurophysiologic correlates of short-term treatment with carbamazepine, oxcarbazepine, and levetiracetam in healthy volunteers.Ann Pharmacother. 2004; 38: 1816-1822
- Methylphenidate improves working memory and set-shifting in AD/HD: Relationships to baseline memory capacity.J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2004; 45: 293-305
- The unity and diversity of executive functions and their contributions to complex “frontal lobe” tasks: A latent variable analysis.Cognit Psychol. 2000; 41: 49-100
- fMRI evidence that the neural basis of response inhibition is task-dependent.Brain Res Cogn Brain Res. 2003; 17: 419-430
- Executive functioning and olfactory identification in young adults with attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder.Neuropsychology. 2001; 15: 211-220
- Inhibitory control in adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.J Atten Disord. 2002; 6: 1-4
- National Adult Reading Test (NART) Test Manual. NFER-Nelson, Windsor, United Kingdom1991
- Is ADHD a disinhibitory disorder?.Psychol Bull. 2001; 127: 571-598
- Does motor programming necessitate response execution?.J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform. 1990; 16: 183-198
- Inhibition and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in adults.Am J Psychol. 2003; 116: 35-50
- Planning and spatial working memory following frontal lobe lesions in man.Neuropsychologia. 1990; 28: 1021-1034
- Double dissociations of memory and executive functions in working memory tasks following frontal lobe excisions, temporal lobe excisions or amygdalo-hippocampectomy in man.Brain. 1996; 119: 1597-1615
- Cognitive effects of anticonvulsant monotherapy in elderly patients: A placebo-controlled study.Seizure. 1998; 7: 159-162
- Neuropsychological functioning in stimulant-naive boys with hyperkinetic disorder.Psychol Med. 2005; 35: 1109-1120
- Inhibition of ongoing responses following frontal, nonfrontal, and basal ganglia lesions.Neuropsychology. 2003; 17: 272-282
- Dissociating executive functions of the prefrontal cortex.in: Roberts A.C. Robbins T.W. Weiskrantz L. The Prefrontal Cortex: Executive and Cognitive Functions. Oxford University Press, Oxford, United Kingdom1998: 117-130
- Prefrontal cognitive processing: Working memory and inhibition in the antisaccade task.J Exp Psychol Gen. 1994; 123: 374-393
- Cognition in depression.Psychiatry. 2003; 2: 43-47
- Stereotaxic display of brain lesions.Behav Neurol. 2000; 12: 191-200
- Right inferior prefrontal cortex mediates response inhibition while mesial prefrontal cortex is responsible for error detection.Neuroimage. 2003; 20: 351-358
- Effect of methylphenidate on executive functioning in adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: Normalization of behavior but not related brain activity.Biol Psychiatry. 2004; 56: 597-606
- Psychological heterogeneity in AD/HD—A dual pathway model of behaviour and cognition.Behav Brain Res. 2002; 130: 29-36
- Neurocognitive effects of methylphenidate in adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.Psychopharmacology (Berl). 2005; 178: 286-295
- Modafinil improves cognition and response inhibition in adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.Biol Psychiatry. 2004; 55: 1031-1040
- Functional neuroanatomy of working memory in adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.Biol Psychiatry. 2005; 57: 439-447
- Inhibitory capacity in adults with symptoms of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).Arch Clin Neuropsychol. 2003; 18: 317-330
Article info
Publication history
Published online: October 17, 2006
Accepted:
July 6,
2006
Received in revised form:
May 8,
2006
Received:
August 11,
2005
Identification
Copyright
© 2007 Society of Biological Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
