Researchers Discover why Children with ADHD Experience Emotional Problems

Researchers have uncovered the mechanism that underlies the emotional difficulties associated with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

ADHD is a neurobehavioral disorder that affects children. Children experiencing ADHD face problems in paying attention, difficulty in controlling impulsive behaviors (acting without thinking about the consequences), and are prone to hyper activity.

Alexander Prehn-Kristensen and colleagues from University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein found that consolidation of emotional memories during sleep was essential for the mental growth of a child. While comparing the brain activity of ADHD children to children without the disorder, the researchers noticed that sleep was unsuccessful in helping ADHD children to consolidate their emotional memories, and that sleep-related deficits further placed them at higher risks of exhibiting some emotional problems during the day.

To analyze the importance of sleep in managing emotional problems, the researchers monitored the brain activity of children with and without ADHD and some healthy adults. As a part of the experiment, all the participants were exposed to some pictures relevant to emotion, including images of scary animals or normal images, like a lamp or an umbrella in the evening. While analyzing the brain activity of participants during their sleep at night, researchers found that brain regions that consolidate emotional memories were not very active in children with ADHD compared to their normal peers.

Highlighting the role of frontal brain activity in consolidating emotional memory in sleep and thus in the mental health of a child, the authors wrote that "deficits in sleep-related selection between emotional and non-emotional memories in ADHD exacerbate emotional problems during daytime as they are often reported in ADHD."

The study has been published in journal PLOS ONE.

The importance of quality sleep for the mental and physical development of a child is well-known. Previous studies have shown that poor sleep leads to a series of problems, including heart diseases, diabetes, academic problems and behavioral problems.