An information theoretical approach to functional connectivity in brain

Abstract

Mental disorders are usually associated with functional abnormalities of brain that are revealed by behavioral symptoms. Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), in particular, is well known to be a common behavioral disorder with characteristic symptoms of inattentiveness, impulsivity and hyperactivity which impairs the life quality of the individuals. Although the characteristics of ADHD is well defined, the neurobiological reasons of this disorder is not fully discovered yet. The introduction of functional near infrared spectrocopy (fNIRS), which is a novel non-invasive optical imaging technology, provided an easy way to reveal hemodynamics of ADHD in brain. In this study, our aim was to find an information theoretical method to diagnose adults withADHDvia fNIRS.We assigned 10ADHDsubjects to experimental group and 12 control subjects to the control group. Each subject in experimental group is involved in two experimental runs which are executed when they are with and without medication denoted by ADHD-ON, ADHD-OFF, respectively. On the other hand, a single experimental run, which is denoted by CONT, is performed for the control group. The subjects performed the Stroop test in experiments. One-wayANOVAanalysis was conducted among three groups of data, namely ADHD-OFF, ADHD-ON and CONTROL, to compare the effect of MPH. Given the significance level of = 0:05, the result F = 6:86; p = 0:0036 indicates that the values of three groups differ significantly from each other. As a result, it is observed that medication normalizes the brain signals of the individuals in ADHD group towards healthy controls..