A new research suggests that in the future, gene therapy could be among the means of treating attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
According to Yahoo News, researchers from the New York University's Langone Medical Center and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that ADHD is connected to the thalamic reticular nucleus. This is an area of the brain that blocks out distracting things.
The research team studied the functioning of the thalamic reticular nucleus in mice. The researchers discovered that a gene mutation in some of the rodents signaled that the thalamic reticular nucleus wasn't working properly. For those mice, distractions can get in the way of their normal activities.
The gene mutation in the mice under observation involved losing a gene called PTCHD1. The researchers found that the thalamic reticular nucleus functions are affected without PTCHD1, leading to aggression, hyperactivity, and disorders on the autism spectrum.
The research team was able to reverse ADHD symptoms by using drugs to boost thalamic reticular nucleus activity. The study has been published in the journal Nature.
Guoping Feng, a neuroscientist from MIT, declared in a press release that understanding the functioning of the thalamic reticular nucleus "may help explain the converging mechanisms across these disorders." The research team has found that a thalamic reticular nucleus dysfunction may be involved in some patients in ADHD, as well as schizophrenia, autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders.
Feng explained that all the information received from different sensory regions in the brain is going into the thalamus. However, not all this information goes through, since it has to be filtered first. In case that the thalamic reticular nucleus doesn't work, the brain gets overwhelmed because of the different daily information. This is the mechanism leading to attention deficit and aggression.
Knowing how the thalamic reticular nucleus responds to the lack of PTCHD1 opens the way for future genetic therapy against ADHD. These future therapies could help stabilize sleep rhythm, improve memory and help the brain to ignore trash information.
