Study: Cognitive Flexibility Improved by ADHD Stimulant Medication Use

additudemag.com:

August 11, 2022Stimulant medication use may significantly improve learning and executive functioning skills in children with ADHD, who typically experience limited cognitive flexibility compared to their peers.

This finding comes from a study published in Molecular Psychiatry that found regional neural flexibility may be predictive of ADHD and symptom severity.1Neural flexibility refers to the brain dynamics thought to underlie cognitive flexibility, or “the ability to selectively switch between mental processes.” Researchers studied the neural flexibility of 180 children with ADHD and 180 typically developing children (TDC) using fMRI and machine learning methods.

Compared to the TDC group, decreased neural flexibility was observed in the ADHD group at both the whole brain and sub-network levels, suggesting “a system-wide dynamic reconfiguration in ADHD rather than a disruption limited to specific sub-systems,” according to the researchers.“Neural flexibility not only potentially links to cognitive flexibility, but also has been reported to predict learning outcomes and executive functions in healthy subjects,” the researchers wrote. “Therefore, neural flexibility might be a useful metric to reflect impaired cognitive flexibility in ADHD subjects.”The effects of stimulant medication on children with ADHD indicated a significant improvement in cognitive functioning.