ADHD and tactile processing

There is much observational and anecdotal evidence for problems with tactile sensory processing in children with ADHD. However, there have previously been virtually no attempts to rigorously quantify differences in tactile sensitivity, habituation, and discrimination between ADHD and non-ADHD children. In this podcast, Editor-in-Chief Bill Yates (University of Pittsburgh) talks with Dr. Nicolaas Puts (Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; Kennedy Krieger Institute) and Dr. Stewart Mostofsky (Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; Kennedy Krieger Institute) about a new study which employed recent innovations in neuroimaging to examine whether children with ADHD showed impaired performance on tactile tasks related to GABAergic inhibitory control. Listen to learn about links between ADHD and neural inhibition, the methods used to test tactile performance, and the specific findings of altered tactile processing in children with ADHD.

Altered tactile sensitivity in children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder
Nicolaas A. J. Puts, Ashley D. Harris, Mark Mikkelsen, Mark Tommerdahl, Richard A. E. Edden, and Stewart H. Mostofsky
Journal of Neurophysiology, published online November 30, 2017. DOI: 10.1152/jn.00087.2017.