Investigating the Mechanism of Deficient Emotional Self-Regulation in Adults with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Using the Event-Related Potential of the Overt and Covert Emotional Faces Task

Background: In addition to the three core symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), the deficient emotional self-regulation (DESR) is considered to contribute to the poor quality of life and functional impairment in youths with ADHD as well as adults with this disorder. Although some studies showed that DESR in ADHD might come from the bottom-up emotional process, others showed the top-down emotional process. However, few studies have examined the two types of emotional processing within one study revealing mixed results and no such study has been conducted in adult ADHD. Knowing the mechanism of DESR in ADHD may help to suggest specific measures for treating ADHD emotional regulations. Therefore, our lab revises the overt and covert emotional face task by Moradi et al. (2017), which will be tested under the event-related potential (ERP). P100 and early posterior negativity (EPN)of ERP are related to the bottom-up emotional process and a late positive potential (LPP) is related to the top-down emotional process. Using emotional faces task ERP, we will investigate the mechanism of DESR regarding emotional stimulus processing among adults with ADHD.Methods: This 2-year project will recruit 100 adults (50 with ADHD and 50 healthy controls without ADHD). All the subjects will receive psychiatric interviews and complete questionnaires: the ADHD Self-Report Scale Symptom Checklist for inattention and hyperactivity-impulsivity symptoms and the emotional self-regulation difficulty scale for DESR. They will receive overt and covert emotional faces task, with the event-related potentials. Using the identical emotional face stimulation picture (Moradi et al., 2017), they need to judge different emotional categories (anger, happiness, fear, and neutral) in the overt emotional face task, and judge the color (yellow, blue, green, red) in the covert emotional face task. Anticipated Results: This work will be the first to use this emotional face task in adult ADHD research. With the data from the event-related potentials in the overt and covert emotional faces tasks, we might know whether bottom-up or top-down process, or both involve DSER and, hence, we can benefit from the findings to develop specific measures for treating the impaired emotional self-regulation in the adult ADHD population.

Project ID:PF10907-1367
External Project ID:MOST109-2410-H182-007