Abstract #2052

Diffusion MRI Detects Different Developmental Trajectory in the Thalamus of Adolescents with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) Compared with Typically Developing Controls

Maria Fatima Falangola^1,2, Vitria Adisetiyo¹, Wende R. Gelb¹, Jens H. Jensen¹, Caixia Hu¹, Ali Tabesh¹, Francisco X. Castellanos³, Adriana DiMartino³, Joseph A. Helpern^1,2

¹Radiology, New York University Langone Medical Center, New York, NY, United States; ²Center for Advanced Brain Imaging, Nathan Kline Institute, Orangeburg, NY, United States; ³Child Study Center, New York University Langone Medical Center, New York, NY, United States

Since the neuroanatomical basis of attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is postulated to involve the frontal cortical-basal ganglia-thalamic-cerebellar circuits, we decided to examine the microstructural integrity of the thalamus in adolescents with ADHD using diffusion MRI, including a new technique called diffusional kurtosis imaging (DKI). We report that for a typically developing adolescent (12-18 yr), there are age-related diffusion changes in the thalamus, but no diffusion changes in the ADHD group, which suggest that there may be a difference in the trajectories of structural development in the thalamus between typically developing and ADHD adolescents.