Like all psy­chi­atric dis­or­ders, ADHD is diag­nosed based on the pres­ence of par­tic­u­lar behav­ioral symp­toms that are judged to cause sig­nif­i­cant impair­ment in an individual’s func­tion­ing, and not on the results of a spe­cific test. In fact, recently pub­lished ADHD eval­u­a­tion guide­lines from the Amer­i­can Acad­emy of Pedi­atrics (AAP) explic­itly state that no par­tic­u­lar diag­nos­tic test should be rou­tinely used when eval­u­at­ing a child for ADHD.

While most ADHD experts would agree that no sin­gle test could or should be used in iso­la­tion to diag­nose ADHD, there are sev­eral impor­tant rea­sons why the avail­abil­ity of an accu­rate objec­tive test would be useful.

First, many chil­dren do not receive a care­ful and com­pre­hen­sive assess­ment for ADHD but are instead diag­nosed with based on eval­u­a­tion pro­ce­dures that are far from optimal.

Sec­ond, although AAP guide­lines indi­cate that spe­cific diag­nos­tic tests should not be rou­tinely used, many par­ents are con­cerned about the lack of objec­tive pro­ce­dures in their child’s eval­u­a­tion. In fact, many fam­i­lies do not pur­sue treat­ment for ADHD because the the absence of objec­tive eval­u­a­tion pro­ce­dures leads them to ques­tion the diag­no­sis. You can read a review of an inter­est­ing study on this issue at www.helpforadd.com/2006/january.htm

For these rea­sons an accu­rate and objec­tive diag­nos­tic test for ADHD could be of value in many clin­i­cal sit­u­a­tions. Two impor­tant con­di­tions would have to be met for such a test to be useful.

First, it would have to be highly sen­si­tive to Read the rest of this entry »

After about age 50, most peo­ple begin to expe­ri­ence a decline in mem­ory capa­bil­ity. Why is that? One obvi­ous answer is that the small arter­ies of the brain begin to clog up, often as a result of a life­time of eat­ing the wrong things and a lack of exer­cise. If that life­time has been stress­ful, many neu­rons may have been killed by stress hor­mones. Given the most recent sci­en­tific lit­er­a­ture, reviewed in my book Thank You, Brain, For All You Remem­ber. What You For­got Was My Fault, dead neu­rons can’t be replaced, except in the hip­pocam­pus, which is for­tu­nate for mem­ory because the hip­pocam­pus is essen­tial for mak­ing cer­tain kinds of mem­o­ries per­ma­nent. Another cause is incip­i­ent Alzheimer’s dis­ease; autop­sies show that many peo­ple have the lesions of the dis­ease but have never shown symp­toms, pre­sum­ably because a life­time of excep­tional men­tal activ­ity has built up a “cog­ni­tive reserve.

So is there any­thing you can do about it besides exer­cise like crazy, eat healthy foods that you don’t like all that much, pop your statin pills, and take up yoga?

Yes. In short: focus, focus, focus.

Chang­ing think­ing styles can help. Research shows that Read the rest of this entry »

We have all heard about chil­dren who have Atten­tion Deficit/Hyperactivity Dis­or­der (AD/HD). Indeed, this con­di­tion seems to affect 5 to 8% of school age chil­dren. Have you ever won­dered what hap­pen to these chil­dren? As many as 60% of them become adults pre­sent­ing AD/HD symp­toms! Ron de Graaf and col­leagues recently pub­lished a study in which they found that an aver­age of 3.5% of work­ers (in ten coun­tries) meet the cri­te­ria for adult ADHD. As you can imag­ine, being an adult with AD/HD can be a chal­lenge at work.

Before we explore this issue let’s start by describ­ing the symp­toms of ADHD.

What is adult AD/HD?

AD/HD is a dis­or­der of the brain. Research clearly indi­cates that AD/HD is to a large extent genetic, that is it tends to run in fam­i­lies. How­ever, AD/HD is a com­plex dis­or­der and other causal fac­tors may be at play.

Typ­i­cally, the symp­toms arise in early child­hood, unless they are asso­ci­ated with some type of brain injury later in life. Some peo­ple have mild AD/HD with only a few symp­toms while oth­ers have more seri­ous AD/HD with more symptoms.

Symp­toms of inat­ten­tion (adapted from the DSM-IV)

Read the rest of this entry »

A reader (thanks Mike!) sends us this fun arti­cle, titled A mat­ter of train­ing, on how to train our mem­ory. Some quotes:

“It’s a skill, not a tal­ent. It’s some­thing any­one could have picked up … I’m not born with this. It’s about train­ing and tech­nique, he says, explain­ing his unusual abil­ity. Anant holds the Limca Record  the Indian equiv­a­lent of the Guin­ness Record œ for mem­o­ris­ing 75 tele­phone num­bers, along with the names of their own­ers, in less than an hour. He is recog­nised as “the man with the most phe­nom­e­nal mem­ory in India.

“Unfor­tu­nately, most peo­ple think that mem­o­ris­ing is very dif­fi­cult. The moment they see some­one demon­strate some­thing like this, they think it’s out of this world.

If you want to remem­ber some­thing, you have to link it to some­thing you already know. Asso­ci­a­tion is the nat­ural prin­ci­pal. For exam­ple, if you need direc­tions to a place, a land­mark is often used as a point of ref­er­ence. And if you derive plea­sure from some­thing you do, there’s a good chance you’ll remem­ber it. Since the brain already works in this man­ner, why don’t we take con­trol of it?

“To me, an intel­li­gent per­son is some­one who is able to put together more of his skills to solve a prob­lem. Intel­li­gence is about using strategies.

The key con­cept here is that mem­ory, as well as other cog­ni­tive skills, can be trained through Read the rest of this entry »