BEHANDLING-God og treffsikker diagnostikk, behandling og rehabilitering

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is often considered a childhood disorder. However, ADHD frequently persists into adulthood. As in children, the best therapy for adult ADHD is central-stimulant phenethylaminedrugs (e.g. methylphenidate), wh ich results in increased pre-frontal and sub-cortical dopamine and noradrenalin levels in the brain. Therefore, ADHD and methylphenidate therapy also influence learning and decision-making, functions strongly relying on sub-cortical and pre-frontal brain processes. Our goal is to explain learning and decision making deficits in adult ADHD patients by describing the underlying affective and cognitive processes including their neural implementation as well as to examine their modulation through through met hylphenidate therapy. In this context we will put particular focus on the influence of comorbidities. From an applied perspective the project provides a first step in the development of new diagnostic methods to improve treatment of. From the perspective of patients and their relatives, the description of decision mechanisms in can help to understand bad decision and to develop coping strategies. These goals are pursued through three studies: A behavioral experiment will compare how healthy controls and A DHD patients on and off methylphenidate perform during instrumental learning and cost/benefit decision-making and use computational modeling to explain differences in task performance. A second experiment shall combine functional magnetic resonance imagin g (fMRI) with mathematical modeling to investigate the brain processes underlying task performance and their modulation by methylphenidate. (3) A third pharmacological MRI experiment shall investigate methylphenidate treatment effects in terms of changes in tonic cerebral blood flow. To tie in the project with tasks more typically used in ADHD research, we will also use a classic neuropsychological test of attention (continuous performance test (CPT)).