EEG POSSIBILITIES FOR EVALUATING ATTENTION-DEFICIT/HYPERACTIVITY DISORDER AND EARLY CHILDHOOD BEHAVIOR

Abstract

This table is made up of four works that analyze the possibilities and application of the electroencephalogram (EEG) to evaluate children’s behavior. The first communication investigates the responses of 8-month-old babies to their peers’ emotions. The results obtained emphasize the importance of temperamental traits in understanding the development of the processing of children’s emotional information. The concern to find measures and biomarkers that contribute to the reliability of the diagnosis of ADHD is the common nexus that communications 2 and 3 share. In the first case, a non-stationary biomarker of ADHD based on Echo State Networks (ESN) is analyzed to quantify dynamic changes in EEG between states of low attention (closed eyes) with regard to normal states (open eyes). The results show differences exclusively in the theta and beta rhythms between these two conditions in a sample of 21 children with ADHD compared to 30 controls. The third study, in which 107 children have participated, compares different criteria, established on the basis of assessment scales administered to parents and teachers and the theta/beta ratio criterion for the detection of children with ADHD. The last communication aims to analyze the EEG activity of children with ADHD diagnosis through experimental tasks that require a differentiated level of cognitive activity (rest, reading, active listening and copying a figure) and to investigate the influence of subtype, sex and age. Ninety-two children (7-13 years old) have participated, referred since the Primary Care consultations.

Inmaculada Moreno García is Doctor in Psychology, Specialist in Clinical Psychology and Professor at the University of Seville, where she teaches Behavioural Modification. She is a professor in different Master’s Degrees given in different Universities. Director of the Clinical Psychology and Quality of Life of Patients and Families Research Group at the University of Seville. She has been Principal Investigator of several Projects of the National Plan on ADHD. She is the author of books on Applied Behavioural Therapy in Childhood and ADHD, as well as numerous scientific articles on this subject. Attention Deficit Disorder is her preferred line of research, having directed different doctoral theses on the subject. She is currently researching the efficacy of behavioral treatments and neurofeedback applied to children and adolescents in this disorder. She has been president of the Clinical Psychology Section of the Official College of Psychologists of Western Andalusia.