Abstract
Introduction
The effect of a single dose of methylphenidate (MPH) on cognitive measures and decision-making processes was assessed in a sample of adults with ADHD and in a control sample.
Methods
Thirty-two adults satisfying DSM-IV criteria for ADHD and 26 healthy controls performed several cognitive tasks. Half of the participants received MPH prior to performing the tasks, and the other half received placebo in a randomized, double-blind manner.
Results
The average digit-span test score was higher in the groups receiving MPH compared to the groups receiving placebo, while diagnosis did not have an effect upon scores. In decision-making tasks, however, MPH did not have an effect upon performance, whereas in one of the tasks the average proportion of risky choices was higher in ADHD adults compared to controls.
Conclusion
Our data therefore demonstrates that (a) MPH is capable of enhancing specific aspects of cognitive performance and (b) this enhancement is not specific to ADHD.
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Notes
Concerning childhood ADHD, however, an imaging study (Vaidya et al. 1998) compared the effect of MPH on children with and without ADHD and found that MPH improved performance of both ADHD and control groups on a go/no-go task.
The participants were also asked if they had been previously diagnosed with ADHD. Of the 26 participants categorized in this way into the ADHD group, 18 participants had a previous ADHD diagnosis. Of the 32 participants allocated into the control (non-ADHD) group, only one had a previous diagnosis, which was not confirmed either in the three self-reports or in the interview with the psychiatrist. Thus, she was classified into the non-ADHD group.
Participants received 15-mg MPH, unless high or low in body weight (according to body mass index categories) in which case they received 20 or 10 mg, respectively.
This finding is inconsistent with a study showing relatively impaired IGT performance in adults with ADHD (Malloy-Diniz et al. 2007). In this study, both ADHD and control groups learned to select advantageously but the rate of convergence to the advantageous alternative in the second half of the task was lower in ADHD adults. However, Malloy-Diniz et al.'s (2007) study used the dynamic version of the IGT where the differences between decks change with time (Bechara et al. 1999). Similar to the current FPGT, this task possibly taxes sustained attention resources to a greater extent than the original IGT.
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This work was supported in part by the Max Wertheimer Minerva Center for Cognitive Studies.
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Agay, N., Yechiam, E., Carmel, Z. et al. Non-specific effects of methylphenidate (Ritalin) on cognitive ability and decision-making of ADHD and healthy adults. Psychopharmacology 210, 511–519 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-010-1853-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-010-1853-4