A Systematic Review on Feature Extraction in Electroencephalography-Based Diagnostics and Therapy in Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

A systematic review on electroencephalographic (EEG)-based feature extraction strategies to diagnosis and therapy of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children is presented. The analysis is realized at an executive function level to improve the research of neurocorrelates of heterogeneous disorders such as ADHD. The Quality Assessment Tool for Quantitative Studies (QATQS) and field-weighted citation impact metric (Scopus) were used to assess the methodological rigor of the studies and their impact on the scientific community, respectively. One hundred and one articles, concerning the diagnostics and therapy of ADHD children aged from 8 to 14, were collected. Event-related potential components were mainly exploited for executive functions related to the cluster inhibition, whereas band power spectral density is the most considered EEG feature for executive functions related to the cluster working memory. This review identifies the most used (also by rigorous and relevant articles) EEG signal processing strategies for executive function assessment in ADHD.