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Context Matters: Accuracy Shapes the Link Between Neural Variability and Behavior in ADHD

Poster Session C - Sunday, March 8, 2026, 5:00 – 7:00 pm PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

Alessandra DallaVecchia¹, Nicolas Zink^1,2, Christian Beste³, Agatha Lenartowicz¹; ¹University of California, Los Angeles, California, USA, ²Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany, ³Dresden University of Technology, Dresden, Germany

Response time variability (RTV), one of the most consistent symptoms in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), has been associated with an increase in neural variability during baseline resting state to RTV in children with ADHD. However, variability is not always functionally irrelevant or detrimental and, therefore, is not necessarily “noise,” creating an inconsistency in how variability should be interpreted. For this reason, we investigated the effect of accuracy and symptom severity on the relationship between RTV and neural variability and structure during a Go/NoGo task in children with and without ADHD (N=176). Specifically, we calculated long-range temporal correlations (LRTCs) and the spectral slope preceding correct (fast, average, and slow responses) and incorrect (false alarms and misses) responses. We find that missed GO signals are preceded by a flattening of the spectral slope and decrease in LRTCs, and that this effect is increases with symptom severity and lower accuracy. But we also find that LRTCs increase with increasing RTV with this effect becoming more pronounced as accuracy improves. So, while we find evidence that supports the connection between attention slips and un-structured neural variability, our results suggest that RTV is associated with increased structure which is inconsistent with the traditional conceptualization of “noise.” Our results show that the dynamics behind behavioral variability do not always necessarily overlap with those behind errors or attention slips, suggestive of a context specificity to the predictions of the association between brain dynamics and RTV.

Topic Area: ATTENTION: Other