Intrinsic Brain Connectivity Following Long-Term Treatment with Methylphenidate in Children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.

Introduction: Although widely used for the treatment of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) across the life span, the effects of methylphenidate (MPH) on the brain are not completely understood. Functional neuroimaging techniques may help increase knowledge about the mechanisms of MPH action.

Objective: To evaluate changes in functional connectivity patterns of the default mode network (DMN) in children with ADHD following long-term treatment with MPH.

Evaluating the reliability of different preprocessing steps to estimate graph theoretical measures in resting state fMRI data.

With resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI) there are a variety of post-processing methods that can be used to quantify the human brain connectome. However, there is also a choice of which preprocessing steps will be used prior to calculating the functional connectivity of the brain. In this manuscript, we have tested seven different preprocessing schemes and assessed the reliability between and reproducibility within the various strategies by means of graph theoretical measures.