White noise may help enhance cognition in children with ADHD, say researchers from the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Brussels, Belgium.1 They studied the behavioral and neurophysiological effects of white noise on attention and inhibition in 13 children with ADHD and 17 without the disorder (aged 7 to 12 years).
The research team had 4 objectives:
(1) to compare noise benefit between children with ADHD and typically developing children (TDC) via a Go/NoGo task
(2) to investigate potential correlations between noise benefit and individual neuropsychological profiles, for which the team developed a Noise Benefit Index (NBI)
(3) to investigate whether the NBI has a neurophysiological impact
(4) to measure spontaneous eye-blink rates to test whether dopaminergic modulation underlies arousal in patients with ADHD in white-noise condition