No clear effects of acute tryptophan depletion on processing affective prosody in male adults with ADHD

2013 
Grabemann M, Mette C, Zimmermann M, Heinrich V, Uekermann J,Wiltfang J, Abdel-Hamid M, Zepf FD, Kis B. No clear effects of acutetryptophan depletion on processing affective prosody in male adultswith ADHD.Objective: Adults with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)have difficulties processing affective prosody, and research evidencedemonstrates the importance of brain serotonin (5-HT) in theneurobiology of ADHD. This study aimed to investigate whetherdiminished brain 5-HT synthesis, as achieved by acute tryptophandepletion (ATD), can impair the processing of affective prosody inadults with ADHD.Method: Twenty male patients with ADHD and twenty male healthycontrols received ATD and a tryptophan-balanced control condition onseparate days in a double-blind within-subject repeated measurescrossover design. In both conditions, the T€ubingen Affect Battery wasadministered in which subjects had to name the affective prosody ofsentences with neutral, congruent, or incongruent semantic content.Results: ParticipantsinthegroupofpatientswithADHDperceivedaffec-tiveprosodylessaccuratelythancontrols.ParticipantswithADHDshowedcompromisedprocessingofsentences,committingmoreerrorsthanhealthycontrolswhenidentifyingaffectininstancesofincongruentsemanticcontent(P = 0.031).ATDdidnotcontributetothiseffect(allP > 0.5).Conclusion: The difficulties male adults with ADHD have in accuratelyprocessing affective prosody may result from impairments in theirability to inhibit unwanted stimuli and impulses. No clear evidenceimplicates 5-HT as a cause of these impairments.
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