Shared and distinct resting functional connectivity in children and adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) often persists into adulthood, with a shift of symptoms including less hyperactivity/impulsivity and more co-morbidity of affective disorders in ADHD_adult. Many studies have questioned the stability in diagnosing of ADHD from childhood to adulthood, and the shared and distinct aberrant functional connectivities (FCs) between ADHD_child and ADHD_adult remain unidentified. We aim to explore shared and distinct FC patterns in ADHD_child and ADHD_adult, and further investigated the cross-cohort predictability using the identified FCs. After investigating the ADHD-discriminative FCs from healthy controls (HCs) in both child (34 ADHD_child, 28 HCs) and adult (112 ADHD_adult,77 HCs) cohorts, we identified both shared and distinct aberrant FC patterns between cohorts and their association with clinical symptoms. Moreover, the cross-cohort predictability using the identified FCs were tested. The ADHD-HC classification accuracies were 84.4% and 81.0% for children and male adults, respectively. The ADHD-discriminative FCs shared in children and adults lie in the intra-network within default mode network (DMN) and the inter-network between DMN and ventral attention network, positively correlated with total scores of ADHD symptoms. Particularly, inter-network FC between somatomotor network and dorsal attention network was uniquely impaired in ADHD_child, positively correlated with hyperactivity index; whereas the aberrant inter-network FC between DMN and limbic network exhibited more adult-specific ADHD dysfunction. And their cross-cohort predictions were 70.4% and 75.6% between each other. This work provided imaging evidence for symptomatic changes and pathophysiological continuity in ADHD from childhood to adulthood, suggesting that FCs may serve as potential biomarkers for ADHD diagnosis.