ADHD Inattention Linked to Wakeful 'Local Sleep' Brain Bursts

In a study of 63 adults (32 with ADHD, 31 controls), ADHD participants showed more sleep-like slow waves during a sustained attention task—especially in fronto-central brain regions—and these waves predicted missed responses and variable reaction times. The findings support the idea of 'local sleep' during wakefulness as a neural mechanism for ADHD inattention and point to sleep-based interventions and EEG biomarkers, though causality isn’t proven and the results come from a lab task.