ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, July 16, 1996 TAG: 9607160073
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Newsday
PARTS OF THE BRAIN are smaller and more symmetrical in boys with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, a new study says.
A study of boys with attention deficit disorder has found that parts of their brains are configured differently than normal, a finding that supports the hotly debated theory that these behavioral disorders are strongly rooted in biology.
Federal researchers have just completed a five-year study of 112 boys - half with serious behavioral and attention problems - and found that precise areas of the brain were smaller and more symmetrical in the boys with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, suggesting that there are functional differences in how they process information.
``This gives us more evidence that attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is a brain condition,'' said Dr. Harold Koplewicz, chairman of child and adolescent psychiatry at New York University Medical Center.
The study was conducted by federal researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health and reported in this month's Archives of General Psychiatry.
Dr. F. Xavier Castellanos and his colleagues used MRI scans to analyze the brains in normal boys and those with ADHD. They compared 12 brain regions and found that one circuit in particular was dramatically different. This circuit links the prefrontal cortex with the basal ganglia, an area of the brain that acts like a relay station to transfer information and is the seat of emotion.
The federal researchers suspect that children with ADHD have problems not with attention per se, but with inhibiting the brain impulse to do something they are not supposed to do. The circuit has two pathways, one that tells the brain to act and the other that tells it not to. Castellanos and his group believe that this latter pathway is somehow damaged.
Structurally, the brain scans showed that the prefrontal cortex, the ``command center'' near the front of the brain, and the basal ganglia's caudate and globus pallidus, the ``accelerator and brakes'' near the middle of the brain, which are usually larger on the right in normal children, were the same size on both sides of the brain in ADHD children.
``There are many people who think ADHD is a myth,'' said Castellanos. ``It is not. We are confident that these findings are not just chance.''
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