Investigating Emotional Interference as a Potential Endophenotypic Marker in Attention-deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: A QEEG Study.

Background: Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) children and their siblings often exhibit deficits in emotional information processing both in terms of emotion recognition and interference. An individual's preparedness to resolve cognitive and emotional conflict before encountering emotionally interfering stimuli or while making a response can reveal the neural basis of emotional processing, utilizing pre-stimulus electroencephalography (EEG) microstates and pre-response source localization. This study aimed to investigate emotional interference via emotional Stroop task (EST) in children with ADHD and their siblings and neurotypical controls.

Methods: In this cross-sectional observation study, 43 children with ADHD, 17 siblings of ADHD children, and 40 age-matched controls participated. EEG data was recorded using 128 channels during EST performance and analyzed for behavioral performance, pre-stimulus microstate parameters, and pre-response source localization of correct response trials.

Results: Behavioral performance showed higher reaction time in ADHD children and their siblings than neurotypical controls. ADHD children had lower accuracy, while their siblings had higher accuracy than controls. Siblings also had higher accuracy compared to children with ADHD. Microstate analysis revealed Map 2 as a state marker and Map 3 as a trait marker. Meanwhile, increased allocation of cognitive resources was found to be a preserved trait among ADHD children and their siblings to resolve cognitive conflict during emotional interference tasks.

Conclusion: EST was found to be a potential cognitive endophenotypic marker.