Microstates
Are the possible specificities of the brain structure and functions of people with ADHD also seen in the brain? This is what research teams around the world are studying, using brain imaging. Thanks to the work of Dutch scientists published in The Lancet Psychiatry in 2017, we know, for example, that the brain volume of people with ADHD is smaller than that of people without ADHD.
For their part, Swiss neuroscientists have used the electroencephalogram (EEG) to study the “microstates” (or microstates) of the ADHD brain. Each micro-state corresponds to a particular configuration of the activity of neurons in the brain: there are five of them (micro-states A, B, C, D and E), each one remains stable for a hundred milliseconds before going to another microstate. The EEG measures their length and frequency.
The researchers were thus able to identify significant differences between the EEGs of adults with and without ADHD, with micro-states of longer duration in people with the disorder, and the concomitant presence of sleep disorders in these same patients. For the authors of the study, micro-state D therefore appears to be a biomarker of ADHD, associated with sleep disorders, an important dimension of ADHD. A reliable and useful new tool for research, diagnosis and treatment, researchers hope.
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