Visual processing oscillates differently through time for adults with ADHD

ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder affecting 3-4% of Canadian adults and 2.6% of adults worldwide. Its symptoms include inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity. Though ADHD is known to affect several brain functions and cognitive processes, little is known regarding its impact on perceptual oscillations. This study compared the temporal features of visual processing between ADHD and neurotypical individuals in a visual word recognition task through the use of a temporal sampling technique, the outcome of which are classification images reflecting processing effectiveness according to the temporal properties of the stimulus. These temporal features were sufficiently different across groups while at the same time sufficiently congruent across participants of the same group that a machine learning algorithm classified participants in their respective groups with a 91.8% accuracy using only a small portion of the available features. Secondary findings showed that individuals with ADHD could be classified with high accuracy (91.3%) regarding their use of psychostimulant medication. These findings suggest the existence of strong behavioral markers of ADHD as well as of regular medication usage on visual performance which can be uncovered by random temporal sampling.