ADHD kids 'have brain dysfunction'

[Guest guest]

ADHD kids 'have brain dysfunction'

By Janelle Miles

September 15, 2005

http://dailytelegraph.news.com.au/story/0,20281,16613386-5001028,00.html

ADOLESCENTS with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have

dysfunction in areas of the brain which help people ignore distractions

and maintain focus, Australian research has found.

Child psychiatrist Alasdair Vance, of the University of Melbourne, and

others, studied the brains of 14 boys aged 12 to 16 using magnetic

resonance imaging (MRI) scans as they performed a working memory task.

The scans of seven children with ADHD were compared with a control group

of healthy adolescents matched for age.

They were shown a three-dimensional cubed object and then four others, one

of which was the same as the first, but rotated.

When asked to select the one which matched the original, the healthy

adolescents performed significantly better than their ADHD counterparts.

Associate Professor Vance found that in the ADHD children, the connections

between the parietal and frontal lobes of the brain which are important

for holding information, were not as active as in the control group.

By comparison, the children with ADHD had increased activation in central

areas of the brain linked to object recognition and motivational shifting

of attention.

" Children with ADHD do have subtle, clear abnormalities in those brain

systems that involve balancing the external inputs they get from their

environment with the internal inputs that occur in their body and brain, "

Prof Vance said.

" What that means is the factors that place children at risk for ADHD are

both ... biological and environmental.

" Our environment shapes the neural networks that we form.

" For example, in ADHD I've got no doubt that there is a group of

vulnerable individuals who'll never develop the disorder because they've

had a particularly helpful environment at critical early stages of life.

" That same individual placed in an at-risk environment may develop

full-blown ADHD. "

Details of the Melbourne study have been published in this month's British

Journal of Psychiatry.

Prof Vance said vulnerability to ADHD may begin with biological events in

the womb, probably during the second trimester of pregnancy when neural

networks begin to develop.

" This may set children up to have the onset and progression of ADHD as

they try and cope with increasingly complex environments throughout life, "

he said.

Children with ADHD often have inattention, concentration difficulties,

planning and organisational problems and impulsive behaviour.

Prof Vance said learning more about how the brains of ADHD sufferers were

affected would hopefully lead to improved medications and psycho-social

treatments.

" Currently, there is no psychological or social intervention that helps

ADHD children uniquely, " he said.

" However, we do know that positive reinforcement for desired behaviour and

focusing on the positive rather than on punishment is helpful. "

Many children with ADHD are prescribed Ritalin.

A recent Australian study found daily doses of fish oil helped calm those

with the disorder.

AAP

This report was published at dailytelegraph.news.com.au

*

The material in this post is distributed without

profit to those who have expressed a prior interest

in receiving the included information for research

and educational purposes.For more information go to:

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html

http://oregon.uoregon.edu/~csundt/documents.htm

If you wish to use copyrighted material from this

email for purposes that go beyond 'fair use', you

must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

[Guest guest]

> A recent Australian study found daily doses of fish oil helped calm

those

> with the disorder.

Does anyone know the details of this study? More than anything else,

I'm curious what amounts of EPA v. DHA they used as compared to the

Oxford-Durham researchers, who used daily doses of 558 mg EPA and 174

mg DHA. I guess I'd also like to know how good the results were.