Emotional Systems in ADHD and Autism
What's the study about?
• Purpose: The purpose of the study is to understand brain development and how our knowledge of brain development can help us understand, diagnose, and treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and/or Autism.
• Procedures: If you choose to allow your child to participate, you will be asked interview questions about your child’s behavior and you and your child will be asked to complete questionnaires. You child will also undergo a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan.
• Duration: This study will take about 5-5.5 hours to complete over two in-person visits, one at Barnard College and one at the Zuckerman Institute.
Who can participate?
8-12 year old youth with ADHD and/or Autism. IQ must be >70 so that participants can understand instructions. Participants cannot have unremovable metal in or on their bodies. Participants should be generally healthy with no major medical concerns related to heart function or brain function (e.g., epilepsy). Legal guardians must be willing to accompany child participants and participate as well.
What will participants be doing?
Parents complete a screening survey over the phone (15 minutes), as well as questionnaires online (30-45 minutes).
At Visit 1, parents complete a clinical interview and children complete an IQ screener and academic screener Children also complete a “mock MRI scan” to see what the scanner is like. (Visit 1 takes roughly 2-2.5 hours)
At Visit 2, children complete the MRI scan. This involves a structural scan (8 minutes) and a task-based scan (20-25 minutes). The task involves looking at emotional pictures and either thinking about how they make the child feel or regulating the emotion felt. Children rate the images as unpleasant to pleasant. We also record heart rate, respiration rate, and sweat response. (Visit 2 takes roughly 1-1.5 hours)
Why is this important?
This study is designed to better understand how youth with ADHD and/or autism manage their emotions and understand their emotions, both biologically and behaviorally. While this is not an intervention study, understanding the mechanisms and behaviors associated with emotional management in youth with neurodevelopmental disabilities could point the way to new interventions to help autistic individual manage emotions more effectively.