
By Staff Writer
According to research from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), brain imaging may reveal differences in the brains of teens with pediatric bipolar disorder (PBD) or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The study is published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
The researchers at UIC used functional magnetic resonance (MR) imaging to study the brain activity of children as they performed a working memory task while viewing the faces of people with different emotional expressions. Participants - who were 23 non-medicated children with PBD, 14 non-medicated children with ADHD and 19 controls ages 10 to 18 - were asked to remember the faces and to press a button in the MR-scanner when they saw the same face again.
Alessandra Passarotti, assistant professor of psychiatry at UIC and lead author of the study, said that the simple test can tell scientists a lot about how the brain remembers faces. She added that they added the emotional component to see how the working memory is affected by these challenges.
The results showed that the brains of children with both disorders revealed dysfunction in the prefrontal cortex. Additionally, the ADHD group had the most severe dysfunction in this region.