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Altered Theta and Beta Oscillations in EEG of Children with ADHD during Naturalistic Story Comprehension
Poster Session B, Friday, October 25, 10:00 - 11:30 am, Great Hall 3 and 4
Ruo-Chi Yao1, Chun-Hsien Hsu1, Hsin-Chi Wu2,3; 1National Central University, Taoyuan, Taiwan, 2Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital, Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation, New Taipei City, Taiwan, 3School of Medicine, Tzu Chi University, Hualien, Taiwan
Resting-state EEG studies on children with ADHD typically show altered brain oscillations compared to their typically developing peers. Unlike previous studies which focused on resting-state EEG, this study aimed to evaluate EEG oscillations during an auditory story comprehension task and compare the brain activity in children with ADHD to that of typically developing children. A total of 60 children (mean age = 83.1 months) were recruited, including 32 with ADHD (mean age = 84.8 months) and 28 typically developing (mean age = 81.2 months). Participants listened to 12 audio stories written for children. The mean duration of stories was 96.86 seconds. Following the stories, they were asked to distinguish between nouns they had previously heard ("old" items) and nouns that they had not heard in the stories ("new" items). The EEG data recorded during story comprehension were analyzed using the Hilbert-Huang Transform (HHT) which is an effective method for analyzing non-linear and non-stationary data. The analysis pipeline involves breaking the EEG data into consecutive 5-second epochs, removing epochs with artifacts, and applying HHT to calculate the power spectrum of each epoch. These spectra were then averaged by subject. Statistical analysis was performed using the cluster-based non-parametric permutation test to compare the spectral differences between children with ADHD and typically developing children. The findings indicated significant effects of group in the theta (6-7 Hz) and beta (25-30 Hz) frequency bands. Notably, the ADHD group showed increased power in both theta and beta bands compared to the control group. Additionally, analysis of the theta to beta ratio (TBR) showed a significant interaction between the sequence of the story and the group of subjects. While typically developing children maintained a consistent TBR throughout the task, children with ADHD demonstrated a significant increase in TBR in the latter parts of the listening tasks. This suggests that children with ADHD may face greater challenges with attentional fatigue or sustaining attention as the task progresses. For behavioral performance, typically developing children performed better in the old/new recognition task, indicating higher accuracy rates compared to children with ADHD. These results not only demonstrate altered brain oscillations in children with ADHD during auditory story comprehension but also suggest greater difficulties these children face in cognitive tasks compared to their typically developing counterparts. This study also highlights the potential of using HHT to analyze EEG data in settings that mimic real-life activities. Monitoring and interpreting EEG oscillations during such naturalistic activities could have significant implications in educational and clinical settings, aiding in the development of interventions to better support children with ADHD.
Topic Areas: Language Development/Acquisition,