NCT03948607

Neural Mechanisms of Attention Lapses in Adult ADHD

Neural Mechanisms Underlying Attention Lapses in Adult Attention Deficit Disorder: Towards a Better Clinical Diagnosis

• Status: Completed
• Phase: —
• Study type: Observational
• Enrollment: 63 (actual)
• Sponsor: University Hospital, Strasbourg, France · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years – 60 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

ADHD is a common disorder, leading to a significant disability that often persists in adulthood. ADHD is characterized by attentional disturbances that are difficult to asses with standard neuropsychological tests. Attention tends to stall after a certain time of fatigue (i.e. an attention lapse). The aim of this study is to study the electroencephalographic (EEG) characteristics of these attention lapses in a sustained attention task, comparing ADHD patients with healthy subjects.

Detailed description

The main goal is to assess with EEG the timing of the attentional demobilization that precedes a sustained attention lapse in patients with ADHD. The secondary objectives are: 1 / To analyze impaired cognitive control mechanisms during lapses in patients with ADHD; 2 / Study the relationships between the deficits identified through EEG recording, clinical evaluations, and the subjective perception of daily difficulties; 3 / To measure the impact of the subjective attention state on the neuronal precursors of the attentional lapses; 4 / Evaluate the relation between propensity to wandering mind and attentional lapses.

Conditions

• Attention Deficit Disorder
• Hyperactivity Disorder

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Electroencephalography during sustained attention task.	The Continuous Temporal Expectancy Task (CTET) (O'Connell et al., 2009) is a very demanding discrimination task with sustained attention. It consists of the presentation on a computer screen of a visual pattern resembling a checkerboard that changes orientation at regular intervals of time. In this task the subject must respond (pressing a response button) to the appearance of rare target stimuli that have a longer duration (1120 ms) than non-target stimuli (800 ms). SART (Sustained Attention to Response Task) (Robertson et al., 1997) is a task of inhibition (Go / No-Go task) to evaluate the capacities of sustained attention. It consists in the successive and random presentation on a computer screen of the numbers from 1 to 9. In this task the subject must respond, by pressing a response button, to the appearance of all the numbers (very non-target stimuli frequent), with the exception of the number "3".

Timeline

• Start date: 2019-09-10
• Primary completion: 2021-05-05
• Completion: 2021-05-05
• First posted: 2019-05-14
• Last updated: 2023-04-18

Locations

1 site across 1 country: France