Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is the most common developmental disorder of childhood, affecting 3-5 % of children in the United States, and often continuing into adulthood. ADHD is associated with multiple serious complications, including poor school achievement, substance abuse, automobile accidents, etc.

Unfortunately, there is no objective procedure to diagnose and quantify ADHD, making it difficult to determine who has the disorder, what medication and what dose of medication is optimally effective, or whether the condition is fading with maturation. Recently we identified a new, promising, non-traditional electroencephalographic (EEG) marker of ADHD - the Consistency Index (CI).

The CI is derived from a novel biomathematical model quantifying the changes in the EEG power spectrum when individuals transition between contiguous tasks. This model is based on our recent notion that the EEG data stream can be represented by a three-dimensional numeric array - at any given moment one dimension is frequency of brain waves, another is spatial - the location of the electrode on a subject's head, and the third is time. ADHD can cause transition inconsistency in the frequency or spatial dimension, or in both.

Ongoing projects and proposals studying this phenomenon include:

"EEG and Psychometric Differences Between Female College Students With and Without ADHD" Principal Investigator: Raina S. Robeva, Ph.D.

This is a jointly conceived project that is now performed at Sweet Briar College focusing on examining the most understudied of all ADHD sub-populations, the adult female. This work further extends previous studies with children at the University of Virginia.

Funding Agency: The Thomas F. Jeffress and Kate Miller Memorial Trust, Grant J-451

"Quantitative Assessment of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: Validation of the EEG Consistency Index" Principal Investigator: Daniel J. Cox, Ph.D.

The objective of this project is to validate the EEG Transition Consistency Model in a large group of boys and girls, ages 8 to 16.

Funding Agency: Virginia Commonwealth Health Research Board