ADHD attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder is one of the most common
mental disorders that develop in
children according to dr. ben Vitiello
of the National Institute of Mental
Health nearly 5 percent of all
school-age children may have the
condition the main symptoms of attention
deficit disorder are hyperactivity which
means a motor activity that is not
really aimed as specific tasks and it is
developmentally inappropriate level of
impulsiveness that are also considered
to be abnormal for the developmental
stage of a child and sometimes also
combined with inattention inability to
concentrate on tasks long enough in
order to complete the task that a child
of a certain age should be able to do
but dr. Vitiello points out the presence
of symptoms does not necessarily mean a
child has ADHD clinical evaluation needs
to be made of a child showing behavioral
issues that create problems at school at
home or in social settings stimulant
medications such as adderall or Ritalin
have been proven to be highly effective
in controlling ADHD symptoms but often
times the question is asked how can
stimulants be used to treat hyperactive
behavior they are correctly identified
as stimulants because they stimulate the
brain to pay attention we stimulate the
part of the brain that pertain to
executive functioning in particular so
ability to efficiently complete tasks as
the child performs more efficiently and
is more focused he may look that he's
calm indeed is not just calm is just
engaged in a task in a much more
efficient and focused way in addition to
advances in behavioral study of ADHD
remarkable strides in technology have
given investigators an even clearer
picture of the brain at work there have
been really huge advances in looking at
the brains and
with ADHD the biggest single change has
been the advent you know the arrival of
magnetic resonance imaging because
that's safe it doesn't involve any
radiation so we can scan children as
they grow up and we can scan them
repeatedly because the best way to
capture a developmental problem like
ADHD is to look at it the same child
over time as they're growing up of
particular interest in recent research
is charting the growth of the brains
cortex in children with ADHD and one
thing that we find that the main finding
is that kids with ADHD show basically
the same overall pattern of their brain
development or cortical development it's
just that everything in kids with ADHD
tends to be a bit slower it's all a bit
delayed so the parts of the brain where
this delay in maturation is most
pronounced is at the front there are the
parts of the brain that are very
important for the control of action and
detention Matt gives us all sorts of new
targets to look out for potential
treatments and ADHD things that we
didn't think of looking at before so for
example if you find that the brain
development case of ADHD is a bit
delayed that might suggest that we
should start looking at the the cell the
cellular mechanisms that the the basics
of why that might be the case the Matt
also then leads to thinking about all
sorts of genes which might regulate the
timing of brain development and how they
might be a bit different in case of ADHD
all of this sort of work working from
the basic brain science and the basic
genetics of ADHD I think it gives us
very good leads into future potential
novel treatments for ADHD to find out
more about ADHD and information about
locating mental health services in your
area go to n IM h dot nih gov