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Divisions & Programs Medical Education Residency & Fellowships Research Faculty ContactRESEARCH
Research studies at the Child Development Center examine new medication or treatment for ADHD. The studies include assessments, diagnosis,
and/or treatment. One on-going study examines the effect of transdermal nicotine patches on daily symptoms, mood, and cardiovascular
activity two times over 2 days.
The faculty at the CDC sees research as an essential component of the Center's mission. Below you will find research interests and projects
for each faculty member:
Francis Crinella, Ph.D.
Clinical Professor
Dr. Crinella's research interests center around brain-behavior relationships, specifically brain systems that mediate attention,
memory and learning in animal models as well as in humans.
Ronald Kotkin, Ph.D.
Clinical Professor, Director of Child Development School
Dr. Kotkin's research involved school wide intervention programs for children with behavioral and learning problems, social skills
training programs for children with ADHD, and behavioral consultation in the public school setting.
James Swanson, Ph.D.
Professor, Director of CDC
Since 2005, Dr. Swanson’s research efforts have been devoted primarily to the National Children’s Study (NCS), a prospective study of the health and development of 100,000 children identified before birth and followed until the age of 21 years. Before 2005, his research and clinical efforts were focused of the assessment and treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
Dr. Swanson initiated several collaborative projects at UCI in the area of ADHD: (1) in 1983 with Steve Simpson and Ron Kotkin, a school-based treatment program for children with ADHD; (2) in 1990 with Tim Wigal, a research program for evaluating effects of stimulant medication and conducting multisite trials of interventions for ADHD; (3) in 1995 with Robert Moyzis, a research program to investigate the molecular genetics of ADHD; (4) in 1997 with Sharon Wigal, a clinical trials program for the design and evaluation of new medications for ADHD; (5) in 2001 with Leanne Tamm, the expansion of a large screening and service delivery program for preschool children with ADHD that included community parent education and “attention training” for children at risk for ADHD.
These programs resulted in some major clinical and scientific contributions in several areas: (1) in the area of behavioral intervention, the UCI school-based treatment program (Swanson et al, 1990; Swanson, 1992); (2) in the area of assessment and treatment of ADHD, reviews of the long history of use of stimulant medications (Swanson, et al, 1993) and the evolving definition of ADHD (Swanson et al, 1998), participation in the multisite Multimodal Treatment study of ADHD (MTA) (MTA Group, 1999a,b; 2004a,b; Swanson et al, 2001), and participation in the Preschool ADHD Treatment Study (PATS) (Greenhill et al, 2006; Kollins et al, 2006; Swanson et al, 2006; Wigal et al, 2006); (3) in the area of molecular genetics, the discovery of association of ADHD with the dopamine receptor D4 (DRD4) gene (LaHoste et al, 1996), the first replication of what is now the most replicated finding in psychiatric genetics (Swanson et al, 1998), the first suggestion of functional significance of 7-repeat allele of the 48 bp VNTR polymorphism in exon 3 of the DRD4 gene (Swanson et al, 2000), and documentation of signs of positive selection for this “risk” allele (Ding et al, 2001; Grady et al, 2003; Wang et al, 2004); (4) in clinical pharmacology, the development of the laboratory school paradigm (Swanson et al, 1999; Swanson et al, 2002), the discovery of acute tolerance to stimulant medication (Swanson et al, 1999), the design of a new drug delivery profile based on proof of concept studies (Swanson et al, 2002) and proof of product studies (Swanson et al, 2000; Swanson et al, 2003), and the development of other stimulant formulations (Swanson et al, 1998; Wigal et al, 2003; Wigal et al, 2004; Swanson et al, 2004) and non-stimulant medications (Swanson et al, 2006) for the treatment of ADHD; (5) in the area of service delivery, development of the Children’s Hospital of Orange County (CHOC) and UC Irvine (UCI) Initiative for the Development of Attention and Readiness (CUIDAR) to deliver parent training and attention training in a community-based model for early intervention (“service before diagnosis”) for the Children and Families Commission (CFC) of Orange County (Tamm et al, 2005).
In December 2004, Dr. Swanson led a group of investigators from UCI, CHOC, and CFC to respond to the request for proposals for Vanguard Centers of the National Children’s Study (www.naitonalchildrensstudy.gov), an extraordinary project with the ambitious goal of identifying 100,000 children (1,000 at each of 100 sites across the USA) before birth and to follow this cohort of children who will represent the future population of the USA to determine the developmental course during pregnancy, at birth, and through childhood and adolescence until the age of 21 years. In September 2005 the Orange County CA (OCCA) site was chosen to be of the 7 Vanguard Centers to initiate this historic study of factors that are associated with health and development in modern environments in the USA. As the Principal Investigator of the OCCA Vanguard Center, Dr. Swanson serves on the Steering Committee of the National Children’s Study.
Sharon B. Wigal, Ph.D.
Clinical Professor, Director of Clinical Trials
Dr. Wigal's research interests are in psychopharmacology with growing experience in clinical trials and multi-site federal studies.
She publishes finding from these research studies as confidentiality permits.
She also received the Mentored Patient-Oriented Research Career Development Award providing funding for 5 years to pursue her developing
research interests. She is currently completing the third year of this grant with some exciting new data on pharmacokinetic and
pharmacodynamic effects of stimulants on preschoolers with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
Tim Wigal, Ph.D.
Associate Clinical Professor
Dr. Wigal focuses on two research areas. The first is the treatment of children with Attention
Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
with special emphasis on the learning, emotional states, and persistence deficits in these children. The second is the effects of
medication on learning and behavior of individuals with developmental
disabilities (ADHD), pervasive developmental disorders (PDD), reading
disabled (RD), or conduct disorders (CD).
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