ADHD - Voice Analysis, Vocal Acoustic Biomarkers in Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Charité University Medicine Berlin

Status: Unknown

Conditions: Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

Study type: Observational

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT01104623

AiF KF2247401-AK9-1

Details and patient eligibility

About

The purpose of this study is to detect specific vocal acoustic patterns in the voice of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) patients.

Full description

This project aims to develop an objective diagnostic instrument for ADHD through an automatic voice-analysis system, which uses as input the natural speech of the participants. The underlying voice-analysis procedure was developed by J. Langner at Humboldt University of Berlin (Langner 2003). It ignores the semantic content of spoken words and extracts prosodic and sound features from the speech.

Aims of the study:

• deliver optimized multivariate logistic regression models of prosodic and sound properties of speech for ADHD.
• observe sensitivity and specificity of the voice-analysis procedure.

Enrollment: 400 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18 to 50 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

1. Age 18-50.
2. Written informed consent.
3. Adult ADHD / Non-ADHD according to the fourth version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM-IV)
4. Normal vocal functioning, negative history for voice or laryngeal disorders.
5. Currently euthyroid condition; in case of past history of thyroid disease and need for current pharmacological treatment, patient needs to be on stable medication for at least 4 weeks.

Exclusion criteria

1. Exclusion of borderline and antisocial personality disorder, assessed by the German version of the SCID-II (Fydrich et al., 1997).
2. Exclusion of schizophrenia and psychotic disorders not otherwise specified.
3. Exclusion of Epilepsia.

Trial design

400 participants in 2 patient groups

ADHD - Patients

Description:

Adults (18-50 years old). All eligible subjects will experience the voice recording procedure followed by the assessment of adult ADHD diagnostics. The diagnostic guidelines for ADHD in adulthood will be accomplished as outlined by expert consensus of the German Society for Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Neurology, with a semi-structured clinical interview following the DSM-IV-TR criteria and the ADHD-Checklist (ADHD-CL) for DSM-IV (Hesslinger et al., 2002) to assess the severity of ADHD-Symptoms. Childhood ADHD symptoms will be rated retrospectively amongst others by using the short version (WURS-k) of the Wender Utah Rating Scale (Ward et al., 1993), German version (Retz-Junginger et al., 2002). To strengthen the validity of the ADHD diagnosis the reported symptoms were corroborated by second party reports.

Healthy Controls

Description:

Adults(18-50 years old). All eligible subjects will experience the voice recording procedure followed by the ADHD-Checklist (ADHD-CL) for DSM-IV (Hesslinger et al., 2002. To assess the severity of Non-ADHD, the absence of childhood ADHD symptoms will be rated retrospectively amongst others by using the short version (WURS-k) of the Wender Utah Rating Scale (Ward et al., 1993), German version (Retz-Junginger et al., 2002).