Abstract #0715

Targeting emotional dysregulation in adult attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder

Antonia Kaiser^1,2,3, Liesbeth Reneman^1,2, Paul J. Lucassen^2,3, Taco de Vries⁴, Anne Marije Kaag^2,5,6, and Anouk Schrantee^1,2,3,7

¹Department of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, Amsterdam UMC, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands, ²Amsterdam Neuroscience, Amsterdam, Netherlands, ³Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences, Center for Neurosciences, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands, ⁴Dept. Anatomy and Neuroscience, Neuroscience Campus Amsterdam, Amsterdam UMC, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, Netherlands, ⁵Addiction Development and Psychopathology (ADAPT) Lab, Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands, ⁶Department of Psychiatry, Amsterdam UMC, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands, ⁷Spinoza Centre for Neuroimaging, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), Amsterdam, Netherlands

Emotional dysregulation (ED) is a core symptom of ADHD. Previous studies suggested that taxing WM can reduce amygdala hyper-responsiveness (associated with ED), using traditional emotional interference tasks. However, these tasks make it impossible to disentangle emotional and WM mechanisms. We therefore conducted an fMRI study, in ADHD patients and controls, using a modified, emotional interference task to assess WM-task induced brain activity and its possible interaction with activity induced by emotional stimuli. Our results suggest that taxing WM has no direct effect on improving emotional regulation in ADHD. This stresses the importance of tasks that disentangle emotional and WM mechanisms.

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