Movie-Watching fMRI Reveals Inter-subject Synchrony Alteration in Functional Brain Activity in ADHD

Abstract

Movie-watching fMRI has been regarded as a novel method to explore the functional brain activity by displaying rich and continuous stimulus. To detect the inter-subject synchrony alteration of brain activity in patients with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), the MRI data of 30 ADHD patients and 30 typically developing (TD) subjects were used in the study, including T1 structural images and functional images (watching the animated film, The present). Two movie clips with significant inter-group difference in state consistency (SC) were extracted from the original movie to explore the effect of the different stimulus on the synchrony alteration of functional brain activity. In the three conditions (entire movie, movie clip 1 and movie clip 2), the inter-subject correlation (ISC) and inter-subject functional correlation (ISFC) of each group were calculated and then compared. The results showed: (a) in the three conditions, the ISC of occipital cortex in ADHD was significantly greater than that in TD; (b) ADHD exhibited decreased ISC in the left postcentral gyrus and right orbital frontal cortex during movie clip 1 and decreased ISC in the inferior frontal gyrus during movie clip 2 compared with TD; (c) the significant inter-group ISFC differences were observed in the regions involved in attention, emotion and cognitive control. This study proves the effectiveness of movie-watching fMRI in exploring the inter-subject synchronization of functional brain activity and promotes the exploration of the neural mechanism of ADHD.