Maria
Fatima Falangola1,2, Vitria Adisetiyo1, Wende R. Gelb1,
Jens H. Jensen1, Caixia Hu1, Ali Tabesh1,
Francisco X. Castellanos3, Adriana DiMartino3, Joseph
A. Helpern1,2
1Radiology, New York University Langone
Medical Center, New York, NY, United States; 2Center for Advanced
Brain Imaging, Nathan Kline Institute, Orangeburg, NY, United States; 3Child
Study Center, New York University Langone Medical Center, New York, NY,
United States
Since
the neuroanatomical basis of attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
is postulated to involve the frontal cortical-basal
ganglia-thalamic-cerebellar circuits, we decided to examine the microstructural
integrity of the thalamus in adolescents with ADHD using diffusion MRI,
including a new technique called diffusional kurtosis imaging (DKI). We
report that for a typically developing adolescent (12-18 yr), there are
age-related diffusion changes in the thalamus, but no diffusion changes in
the ADHD group, which suggest that there may be a difference in the
trajectories of structural development in the thalamus between typically
developing and ADHD adolescents.