By Ariana Eunjung Cha Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder is often thought of a boy thing. In explaining the jump in cases in recent years, numerous researchers, educators and parents have theorized that perhaps boys are hardwired to be more impulsive, wiggly and less able to stay on task in the early years than their female counterparts. That may be a myth. A study published in The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry on Tuesday shows a surprising 55 percent increase in prevalence of diagnoses among girls — from 4.7 percent to 7.3 percent from 2003 to 2011. The rise in cases in girls mirrors a similar but less-sharp rise in cases in boys from a prevalence of 11.8 to 16.5 percent. During the same period, the researchers found an increase in cases across all races and ethnicities but especially in Hispanic children. In all children, the prevalence increased from 8.4 percent to 12 percent. The analysis, conducted by George Washington University biostatistician Sean D. Cleary and his co-author Kevin P. Collins of Mathematica Policy Research, was based on data from the National Survey of Children's Health in which parents were asked whether they had been told by a doctor or other health care provider that their child has ADHD.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 18: Attention and Higher Cognition; Chapter 12: Sex: Evolutionary, Hormonal, and Neural Bases
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 14: Attention and Higher Cognition; Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex
Link ID: 21683 - Posted: 12.09.2015

Aimee Cunningham For a child with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, meeting the daily expectations of home and school life can be a struggle that extends to bedtime. The stimulant medications commonly used to treat ADHD can cause difficulty falling and staying asleep, a study finds. And that can make the next day that much harder. As parents are well aware, sleep affects a child's emotional and physical well-being, and it is no different for those with ADHD. "Poor sleep makes ADHD symptoms worse," says Katherine M. Kidwell, a doctoral student in clinical psychology at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, who led the study. "When children with ADHD don't sleep well, they have problems paying attention the next day, and they are more impulsive and emotionally reactive." Stimulant medications boost alertness, and some studies have found a detrimental effect on children's sleep. However, other studies have concluded that the stimulants' ameliorating effects improve sleep. The drugs include amphetamines such as Adderall and methylphenidate such as Ritalin. To reconcile the mixed results on stimulants and children's sleep, Kidwell and her colleagues undertook a meta-analysis, a type of study that summarizes the results of existing research. The team found nine studies that met their criteria. These studies compared children who were taking stimulant medication with those who weren't. The studies also randomly assigned children to the experimental group or the control group and used objective measures of sleep quality and quantity, such as assessing sleep in a lab setting or with a wristwatch-like monitor at home rather than a parent's report. © 2015 npr

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 18: Attention and Higher Cognition; Chapter 14: Biological Rhythms, Sleep, and Dreaming
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 14: Attention and Higher Cognition; Chapter 10: Biological Rhythms and Sleep
Link ID: 21659 - Posted: 11.25.2015

Jon Hamilton A look at the brain's wiring can often reveal whether a person has trouble staying focused, and even whether they have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, known as ADHD. A team led by researchers at Yale University reports that they were able to identify many children and adolescents with ADHD by studying data on the strength of certain connections in their brains. "There's an intrinsic signature," says Monica Rosenberg, a graduate student and lead author of the study in Nature Neuroscience. But the approach isn't ready for use as a diagnostic tool yet, she says. The finding adds to the evidence that people with ADHD have a true brain disorder, not just a behavioral problem, says Mark Mahone, director of neuropsychology at the Kennedy Krieger institute in Baltimore. "There are measurable ways that their brains are different," he says. The latest finding came from an effort to learn more about brain connections associated with attention. Initially, the Yale team used functional MRI, a form of magnetic resonance imaging, to monitor the brains of 25 typical people while they did something really boring. Their task was to watch a screen that showed black-and-white images of cities or mountains and press a button only when they saw a city. © 2015 npr

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 18: Attention and Higher Cognition; Chapter 2: Functional Neuroanatomy: The Cells and Structure of the Nervous System
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 14: Attention and Higher Cognition; Chapter 1: Cells and Structures: The Anatomy of the Nervous System
Link ID: 21656 - Posted: 11.24.2015

By Katherine Ellison Last year, Sinan Sonmezler of Istanbul refused to keep going to school. His eighth-grade classmates called him “weird” and “stupid,” and his teachers rebuked him for his tendency to stare out the window during class. The school director told his parents he was “lazy.” Sinan has attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, a condition still little understood in many parts of the world. “He no longer believes he can achieve anything, and has quit trying,” said Sinan’s father, Umit Sonmezler, a mechanical engineer. While global diagnoses of A.D.H.D. are on the rise, public understanding of the disorder has not kept pace. Debates about the validity of the diagnosis and the drugs used to treat it — the same that have long polarized Americans — are now playing out from Northern and Eastern Europe to the Middle East and South America. Data from various nations tell a story of rapid change. In Germany, A.D.H.D. diagnosis rates rose 381 percent from 1989 to 2001. In the United Kingdom, prescriptions for A.D.H.D. medications rose by more than 50 percent in five years to 657,000 in 2012, up from 420,000 in 2007. Consumption of A.D.H.D. medications doubled in Israel from 2005 to 2012. The surge in use of the medications has prompted skepticism that pharmaceutical firms, chasing profits in an $11 billion international market for A.D.H.D. drugs, are driving the global increase in diagnoses. In 2007, countries outside the United States accounted for only 17 percent of the world’s use of Ritalin. By 2012, that number had grown to 34 percent. © 2015 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 18: Attention and Higher Cognition
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 14: Attention and Higher Cognition
Link ID: 21618 - Posted: 11.10.2015

James Hamblin Mental exercises to build (or rebuild) attention span have shown promise recently as adjuncts or alternatives to amphetamines in addressing symptoms common to Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Building cognitive control, to be better able to focus on just one thing, or single-task, might involve regular practice with a specialized video game that reinforces "top-down" cognitive modulation, as was the case in a popular paper in Nature last year. Cool but still notional. More insipid but also more clearly critical to addressing what's being called the ADHD epidemic is plain old physical activity. This morning the medical journal Pediatrics published research that found kids who took part in a regular physical activity program showed important enhancement of cognitive performance and brain function. The findings, according to University of Illinois professor Charles Hillman and colleagues, "demonstrate a causal effect of a physical program on executive control, and provide support for physical activity for improving childhood cognition and brain health." If it seems odd that this is something that still needs support, that's because it is odd, yes. Physical activity is clearly a high, high-yield investment for all kids, but especially those attentive or hyperactive. This brand of research is still published and written about as though it were a novel finding, in part because exercise programs for kids remain underfunded and underprioritized in many school curricula, even though exercise is clearly integral to maximizing the utility of time spent in class.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 17: Learning and Memory; Chapter 11: Motor Control and Plasticity
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory and Learning; Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System
Link ID: 21463 - Posted: 10.01.2015

By Judith Berck The 73-year-old widow came to see Dr. David Goodman, an assistant professor in the psychiatry and behavioral sciences department at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, after her daughter had urged her to “see somebody” for her increasing forgetfulness. She was often losing her pocketbook and keys and had trouble following conversations, and 15 minutes later couldn’t remember much of what was said. But he did not think she had early Alzheimer’s disease. The woman’s daughter and granddaughter had both been given a diagnosis of A.D.H.D. a few years earlier, and Dr. Goodman, who is also the director of a private adult A.D.H.D. clinical and research center outside of Baltimore, asked about her school days as a teenager. “She told me: ‘I would doodle because I couldn’t pay attention to the teacher, and I wouldn’t know what was going on. The teacher would move me to the front of the class,’ ” Dr. Goodman said, After interviewing her extensively, noting the presence of patterns of impairment that spanned the decades, Dr. Goodman diagnosed A.D.H.D. He prescribed Vyvanse, a short-acting stimulant of the central nervous system. A few weeks later, the difference was remarkable. “She said: ‘I’m surprised, because I’m not misplacing my keys now, and I can remember things better. My mind isn’t wandering off, and I can stay in a conversation. I can do something until I finish it,’ ” Dr. Goodman said. Once seen as a disorder affecting mainly children and young adults, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is increasingly understood to last throughout one’s lifetime. © 2015 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior; Chapter 18: Attention and Higher Cognition
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 4: Development of the Brain; Chapter 14: Attention and Higher Cognition
Link ID: 21455 - Posted: 09.29.2015

William Sutcliffe Most epidemics are the result of a contagious disease. ADHD – Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder – is not contagious, and it may not even be a genuine malady, but it has acquired the characteristics of an epidemic. New data has revealed that UK prescriptions for Ritalin and other similar ADHD medications have more than doubled in the last decade, from 359,100 in 2004 to 922,200 last year. In America, the disorder is now the second most frequent long-term diagnosis made in children, narrowly trailing asthma. It generates pharmaceutical sales worth $9bn (£5.7bn) per year. Yet clinical proof of ADHD as a genuine illness has never been found. Sami Timimi, consultant child psychiatrist at Lincolnshire NHS Trust and visiting professor of child psychiatry, is a vocal critic of the Ritalin-friendly orthodoxy within the NHS. While he is at pains to stress that he is “not saying those who have the diagnosis don’t have any problem”, he is adamant that “there is no robust evidence to demonstrate that what we call ADHD correlates with any known biological or neurological abnormality”. The hyperactivity, inattentiveness and lack of impulse control that are at the heart of an ADHD diagnosis are, according to Timimi, simply “a collection of behaviours”. Any psychiatrist who claims that a behaviour is being caused by ADHD is perpetrating a “philosophical tautology” – he is doing nothing more than telling you that hyperactivity is caused by an alternative name for hyperactivity. There is still no diagnostic test – no marker in the body – that can identify a person with ADHD. The results of more than 40 brain scan studies are described by Timimi as “consistently inconsistent”. No conclusive pattern in brain activity had been found to explain or identify ADHD. © independent.co.uk

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 18: Attention and Higher Cognition
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 14: Attention and Higher Cognition
Link ID: 21425 - Posted: 09.21.2015

Helen Thomson Modafinil is the world’s first safe “smart drug”, researchers at Harvard and Oxford universities have said, after performing a comprehensive review of the drug. They concluded that the drug, which is prescribed for narcolepsy but is increasingly taken without prescription by healthy people, can improve decision- making, problem-solving and possibly even make people think more creatively. While acknowledging that there was limited information available on the effects of long-term use, the reviewers said that the drug appeared safe to take in the short term, with few side effects and no addictive qualities. Modafinil has become increasingly common in universities across Britain and the US. Prescribed in the UK as Provigil, it was licensed in 2002 for use as a treatment for narcolepsy - a brain disorder that can cause a person to suddenly fall asleep at inappropriate times or to experience chronic pervasive sleepiness and fatigue. Used without prescription, and bought through easy-to-find websites, modafinil is what is known as a smart drug - used primarily by people wanting to improve their focus before an exam. A poll of Nature journal readers suggested that one in five have used drugs to improve focus, with 44% stating modafinil as their drug of choice. But despite its increasing popularity, there has been little consensus on the extent of modafinil’s effects in healthy, non-sleep-disordered humans. A new review of 24 of the most recent modafinil studies suggests that the drug has many positive effects in healthy people, including enhancing attention, improving learning and memory and increasing something called “fluid intelligence” - essentially our capacity to solve problems and think creatively. © 2015 Guardian News and Media Limited

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 18: Attention and Higher Cognition; Chapter 14: Biological Rhythms, Sleep, and Dreaming
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 14: Attention and Higher Cognition; Chapter 10: Biological Rhythms and Sleep
Link ID: 21318 - Posted: 08.20.2015

April Dembosky Developers of a new video game for your brain say theirs is more than just another get-smarter-quick scheme. Akili, a Northern California startup, insists on taking the game through a full battery of clinical trials so it can get approval from the Food and Drug Administration — a process that will take lots of money and several years. So why would a game designer go to all that trouble when there's already a robust market of consumers ready to buy games that claim to make you smarter and improve your memory? Think about all the ads you've heard for brain games. Maybe you've even passed a store selling them. There's one at the mall in downtown San Francisco — just past the cream puff stand and across from Jamba Juice — staffed on my visit by a guy named Dominic Firpo. "I'm a brain coach here at Marbles: The Brain Store," he says. Brain coach? "Sounds better than sales person," Firpo explains. "We have to learn all 200 games in here and become great sales people so we can help enrich peoples' minds." He heads to the "Word and Memory" section of the store and points to one product that says it will improve your focus and reduce stress in just three minutes a day. "We sold out of it within the first month of when we got it," Firpo says. The market for these "brain fitness" games is worth about $1 billion and is expected to grow to $6 billion in the next five years. Game makers appeal to both the young and the older with the common claim that if you exercise your memory, you'll be able to think faster and be less forgetful. Maybe bump up your IQ a few points. "That's absurd," says psychology professor Randall Engle from the Georgia Institute of Technology. © 2015 NPR

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 18: Attention and Higher Cognition; Chapter 17: Learning and Memory
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 14: Attention and Higher Cognition; Chapter 13: Memory and Learning
Link ID: 21278 - Posted: 08.10.2015

By Ariana Eunjung Cha Children who suffer an injury to the brain -- even a minor one -- are more likely to experience attention issues, according to a study published Monday in the journal Pediatrics. The effects may not be immediate and could occur long after the incident. Study author Marsh Konigs, a doctoral candidate at VU University Amsterdam, described the impact as "very short lapses in focus, causing children to be slower." Researchers looked at 113 children, ages six to 13, who suffered from traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) ranging from a concussion that gave them a headache or caused them to vomit, to losing consciousness for more than 30 minutes, and compared them with a group of 53 children who experienced a trauma that was not head-related. About 18 months after the children's accidents, parents and teachers were asked to rate their attention and other indicators of their health. They found that those with TBI had more lapses in attention and other issues, such as anxiety, a tendency to internalize their problems and slower processing speed. Based on studies of adults who experienced attention issues after suffering from a brain injury, doctors have theorized for years that head injuries in children might be followed by a "secondary attention deficit hyperactivity disorder." This study appears to confirm that association.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 18: Attention and Higher Cognition; Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 14: Attention and Higher Cognition; Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization
Link ID: 21258 - Posted: 08.04.2015

by Penny Sarchet Children with ADHD are more likely to succeed in cognitive tasks when they are fidgeting. Rather than telling them to stop, is it time to let them squirm in class? The results, from a small study of teens and pre-teens, add to growing evidence that movement may help children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder to think. One of the theories about ADHD is that the brain is somehow under-aroused. Physical movements could help wake it up or maintain alertness, perhaps by stimulating the release of brain-signalling chemicals like dopamine or norepinephrine. This hypothesis would help explain why countries like the US are experiencing an epidemic of ADHD – it might be that a lack of physical activity leads to reduced brain function. Fidget britches In the latest study, Julie Schweitzer of the University of California, Davis, and her colleagues asked 44 children with ADHD and 29 kids without to describe an arrangement of arrows. The children with ADHD were more likely to focus on the task and answer correctly if the test coincided with them fidgeting, as tracked by an ankle monitor. Intriguingly, Schwietzer found that it is the vigour of movements, rather than how often children make them, that seems to be related to improvements in test scores. This might mean, for example, that it helps children to swing their legs in longer arcs, but not to swing them faster. "I think we need to consider that fidgeting is helpful," says Schweitzer. "We need to find ways that children with ADHD can move without being disruptive to others." Dustin Sarver at the University of Mississippi, who recently found a link between fidgeting and improved working memory, agrees. "We should revisit the targets we want for these children, such as improving the work they complete and paying attention, rather than focusing on sitting still." He suggests that movements that are not disruptive to other schoolchildren, such as squirming, bouncing and leg movements, as opposed to getting up in the middle of lessons, could be encouraged in classrooms. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 18: Attention and Higher Cognition
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 14: Attention and Higher Cognition
Link ID: 21044 - Posted: 06.13.2015

By Arlene Karidis Health-care professionals, educators and patient advocates debate endlessly over attention deficit disorder. Some argue about the cause of the condition, which is associated with inattentiveness and, often, hyperactivity. Many disagree on treatment and parenting techniques. A dwindling group disputes whether it actually exists. Even its name — to be formal, it’s attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder — has been a source of debate. The label ADHD trivializes the disorder, asserts Russell Barkley, a neuropsychiatrist and professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the Medical University of South Carolina who has published more than 300 peer-reviewed articles on the condition. “ADHD is not simply about not being able to pay attention. Describing it as such is like calling autism a ‘not looking at people’ problem,” he said, and there is much more to ADHD. Some practitioners and researchers say drugs are by far the most effective treatment. Others argue that long-term drug use addresses symptoms only and does not provide important tools to help people manage their inattentiveness. They say it’s more helpful to focus on behavioral interventions, nutrition, exercise and special accommodations at school. The American Psychiatric Association says there is no doubt that ADHD exists — and it estimates that 5 percent of U.S. children have the condition.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 18: Attention and Higher Cognition
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 14: Attention and Higher Cognition
Link ID: 21008 - Posted: 06.02.2015

Anya Kamenetz Are you a pen-clicker? A hair-twirler? A knee-bouncer? Did you ever get in trouble for fidgeting in class? Don't hang your head in shame. All that movement may be helping you think. A new study suggests that for children with attention disorders, hyperactive movements meant better performance on a task that requires concentration. The researchers gave a small group of boys, ages 8 to 12, a sequence of random letters and numbers. Their job: Repeat back the numbers in order, plus the last letter in the bunch. All the while, the kids were sitting in a swiveling chair. For the subjects with ADHD, moving and spinning in the chair were correlated with better performance. For typically developing kids, however, it was the opposite: the more they moved, the worse they did on the task. Dustin Sarver at the University of Mississippi Medical Center is the lead author of this study. ADHD is his field, and he has a theory as to why fidgeting helps these kids. "We think that part of the reason is that when they're moving more they're increasing their alertness." That's right — increasing. The prevailing scientific theory on attention disorders holds that they are caused by chronic underarousal of the brain. That's why stimulants are prescribed as treatment. Sarver believes that slight physical movements "wake up" the nervous system in much the same way that Ritalin does, thus improving cognitive performance. © 2015 NPR

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 18: Attention and Higher Cognition
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 14: Attention and Higher Cognition
Link ID: 20931 - Posted: 05.14.2015

|By Rebecca Harrington Kraft Macaroni & Cheese—that favorite food of kids, packaged in the nostalgic blue box—will soon be free of yellow dye. Kraft announced Monday that it will remove artificial food coloring, notably Yellow No. 5 and Yellow No. 6 dyes, from its iconic product by January 2016. Instead, the pasta will maintain its bright yellow color by using natural ingredients: paprika, turmeric and annatto (the latter of which is derived from achiote tree seeds). The company said it decided to pull the dyes in response to growing consumer pressure for more natural foods. But claims that the dyes may be linked to attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children have also risen recently, as they did years ago, putting food dyes under sharp focus once again. On its Web site Kraft says synthetic colors are not harmful, and that their motivation to remove them is because consumers want more foods with no artificial colors. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration maintains artificial food dyes are safe but some research studies have found the dyes can contribute to hyperactive behavior in children. Food dyes have been controversial since pediatrician Benjamin Feingold published findings in the 1970s that suggested a link between artificial colors and hyperactive behavior, but scientists, consumers and the government have not yet reached a consensus on the extent of this risk or the correct path to address it. After a 2007 study in the U.K. showed that artificial colors and/or the common preservative sodium benzoate increased hyperactivity in children, the European Union started requiring food labels indicating that a product contains any one of six dyes that had been investigated. The label states the product "may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children." © 2015 Scientific American

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 18: Attention and Higher Cognition; Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 14: Attention and Higher Cognition; Chapter 3: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology
Link ID: 20851 - Posted: 04.28.2015

|By Tara Haelle When it comes to treating attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) a lot of kids are getting the meds they need—but they may be missing out on other treatments. Despite clinical guidelines that urge that behavioral therapy always be used alongside medication, less than half of the children with ADHD received therapy as part of treatment in 2009 and 2010, according to the first nationally representative study of ADHD treatment in U.S. children. The findings, published online March 31 in The Journal of Pediatrics, come from data collected during that period on 9,459 children, aged four to 17, with diagnosed ADHD—just before the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) issued its clinical practice guidelines on treatments of the condition in 2011. They provide a baseline for comparison when the next report is issued in 2017. Medication alone was the most common treatment for children with ADHD: 74 percent had taken medication in the previous week whereas 44 percent had received behavioral therapy in the past year. Just under a third of children of all ages had received both medication and behavioral therapy, the AAP-recommended treatment for all ages. “It’s not at all surprising that medication is the most common treatment,” says Heidi Feldman, a professor of developmental and behavioral pediatrics at Stanford University School of Medicine who served on the AAP clinical practice guidelines committee. “It works very effectively to reduce the core symptoms of the condition,” she adds, “and stimulants are relatively safe if used properly. The limitation of stimulant medications for ADHD is that studies do not show a long-term functional benefit from medication use.” © 2015 Scientific American

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 18: Attention and Higher Cognition; Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 14: Attention and Higher Cognition; Chapter 3: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology
Link ID: 20827 - Posted: 04.21.2015

By Shereen Lehman (Reuters Health) - Children exposed to tobacco smoke at home are up to three times more likely to have attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD) as unexposed kids, according to a new study from Spain. The association was stronger for kids with one or more hours of secondhand smoke exposure every day, the authors found. And the results held when researchers accounted for parents' mental health and other factors. "We showed a significant and substantial dose-response association between (secondhand smoke) exposure in the home and a higher frequency of global mental problems," the authors write in Tobacco Control, online March 25. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, two of every five children in the US are exposed to secondhand smoke regularly. Alicia Padron of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine in Florida and colleagues in Spain analyzed data from the 2011 to 2012 Spanish National Health Interview Survey, in which parents of 2,357 children ages four to 12 reported the amount of time their children were exposed to secondhand smoke every day. The parents also filled out questionnaires designed to evaluate their children's mental health. According to the results, about eight percent of the kids had a probable mental disorder. About 7% of the kids were exposed to secondhand smoke for less than one hour per day, and 4.5% were exposed for an hour or more each day. © 2015 Scientific American,

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 18: Attention and Higher Cognition; Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 14: Attention and Higher Cognition; Chapter 3: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology
Link ID: 20753 - Posted: 04.04.2015

by Michael Slezak What were we talking about? Oh yes, brain-training programmes may be useful for helping inattentive people focus on tasks in their daily life. At least, that's the implication of an analysis looking at one particular programme. It's the latest salvo in a field that has seen the battles lines drawn between those who believe there is no compelling scientific evidence that training the brain to do a specific task better can offer wider cognitive improvements, and those that think it can work in some cases. The party line is that brain training improves only that which it exercises, says Jared Horvath from the University of Melbourne in Australia. "What this means is, if the training programme uses a working memory game, you get better at working memory games and little else." But an analysis by Megan Spencer-Smith of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and Torkel Klingberg at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, claims to show that there are benefits for daily life – at least for people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or other problems related to attentiveness. They focused on a programme called Cogmed, which Klingberg has helped develop, and combined the results of several smaller studies. Cogmed is designed to improve how much verbal or visual information you can temporarily remember and work with. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 18: Attention and Higher Cognition; Chapter 17: Learning and Memory
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 14: Attention and Higher Cognition; Chapter 13: Memory and Learning
Link ID: 20705 - Posted: 03.21.2015

People with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are about twice as likely to die prematurely as those without the disorder, say researchers. Researchers followed 1.92 million Danes, including 32,000 with ADHD, from birth through to 2013. "In this nationwide prospective cohort study with up to 32-year followup, children, adolescents and adults with ADHD had decreased life expectancy and more than double the risk of death compared with people without ADHD," Soren Dalsgaard, from Aarhus University in Denmark, and his co-authors concluded in Wednesday's online issue of Lancet. Actress Kirstie Alley holds a picture of Raymond Perone while testifying in favour of a bill designed to curb the over-prescribing of psychotropic drugs. Danish researchers studying ADHD say medications can reduce symptoms of inattention and impulsivity. (Phil Coale/Associated Press) "People diagnosed with ADHD in adulthood had a greater risk of death than did those diagnosed in childhood and adolescence. This finding could be caused by persistent ADHD being a more severe form of the disorder." Of the 107 individuals with ADHD who died, information on cause of death was available for 79. Of those, 25 died from natural causes and 54 from unnatural causes, including 42 from accidents. Being diagnosed with ADHD along with oppositional defiant disorder, conduct disorder and substance use disorder also increased the risk of death, the researchers found. Mortality risk was also higher for females than males, which led Dalsgaard to stress the need for early diagnosis, especially in girls and women, and to treat co-existing disorders. Although talk of premature death will worry parents and patients, they can seek solace in knowing the absolute risk of premature death at an individual level is low and can be greatly reduced with treatment, Stephen Faraone, a professor of psychiatry and director of child and adolescent psychiatry research at SUNY Upstate Medical University in New York, said in a journal commentary published with the study. ©2015 CBC/Radio-Canada.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 18: Attention and Higher Cognition
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 14: Attention and Higher Cognition
Link ID: 20623 - Posted: 02.26.2015

By Katherine Ellison Dr. Mark Bertin is no A.D.H.D. pill-pusher. The Pleasantville, N.Y., developmental pediatrician won’t allow drug marketers in his office, and says he doesn’t always prescribe medication for children diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Yet Dr. Bertin has recently changed the way he talks about medication, offering parents a powerful argument. Recent research, he says, suggests the pills may “normalize” the child’s brain over time, rewiring neural connections so that a child would feel more focused and in control, long after the last pill was taken. “There might be quite a profound neurological benefit,” he said in an interview. A growing number of doctors who treat the estimated 6.4 million American children diagnosed with A.D.H.D. are hearing that stimulant medications not only help treat the disorder but may actually be good for their patients’ brains. In an interview last spring with Psych Congress Network, http://www.psychcongress.com/video/are-A.D.H.D.-medications-neurotoxic-or-neuroprotective-16223an Internet news site for mental health professionals, Dr. Timothy Wilens, chief of child and adolescent psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, said “we have enough data to say they’re actually neuroprotective.” The pills, he said, help “normalize” the function and structure of brains in children with A.D.H.D., so that, “over years, they turn out to look more like non-A.D.H.D. kids.” Medication is already by far the most common treatment for A.D.H.D., with roughly 4 million American children taking the pills — mostly stimulants, such as amphetamines and methylphenidate. Yet the decision can be anguishing for parents who worry about both short-term and long-term side effects. If the pills can truly produce long-lasting benefits, more parents might be encouraged to start their children on these medications early and continue them for longer. Leading A.D.H.D. experts, however, warn the jury is still out. © 2015 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 18: Attention and Higher Cognition; Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 14: Attention and Higher Cognition; Chapter 4: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 20544 - Posted: 02.03.2015

By Michael Balter Our ancestors likely had sex with Neandertals, but when and where did these encounters take place? The discovery of a 55,000-year-old partial skull of a modern human in an Israeli cave, the first sighting of Homo sapiens in this time and place, offers skeletal evidence to support the idea that Neandertals and moderns mated in the Middle East between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago. What’s more, the skull could belong to an ancestor of the modern humans who later swept across Europe and Asia and replaced the Neandertals. The find supports a raft of recent genetic studies. A 2010 analysis, for example, found that up to 2% of the genomes of today’s Europeans and Asians consist of Neandertal DNA, a clear sign of at least limited interbreeding in the past. Two years later, scientists compared ancient DNA extracted from Neandertal fossils to that of contemporary modern human populations around the world, concluding that this interbreeding took place in the Middle East, most likely between 47,000 and 65,000 years ago. And last year, a 45,000-year-old modern human found in Siberia, the oldest modern to have its genome sequenced, was revealed to have harbored a little more than 2% Neandertal DNA, allowing researchers to refine the interbreeding event to roughly 50,000 to 60,000 years ago. From the Neandertal side, this time and place make sense. That’s because numerous skeletons dated to that time period have been found in caves in Israel and other parts of the Middle East over the years, and Neandertals were still living in the region as late as 49,000 years ago. Yet the other side of this mating partnership has been conspicuously absent from the fossil record of the Middle East. © 2015 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 1: Introduction: Scope and Outlook
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 20:
Link ID: 20532 - Posted: 01.29.2015