Mental & Emotional Health

ADHD Kids’ Brains Mature More Slowly
To summarize this article, researchers at the Montreal Neurological Institute (McGill University, Canada), with funding from the Intramural Research Program at the National Institute of Health have found that parts of ADHD diagnosed children “develop slower� than those of other children. The part of the brain that controls inappropriate actions and thoughts, the attention focusing ability, the moment-to-moment activity memory, the work-for-reward and the movement control areas of the brain may be lagging behind in development by as much as three years. (So now, when you your mother in an exasperated telephone call that you can’t get your seven-year-old to act her age, there may be a biological component as to why.)

Dr. Philip Shaw, member of the National Institute of Mental Health lead researchers who may have discovered an integral part in the cause of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

“Finding a normal pattern of cortex maturation, albeit delayed, in children with ADHD should be reassuring to families and could help to explain why many youth eventually seem to grow out of the disorder,� Shaw said in a statement.

Unfortunately though, there are children who do not, and will not grow out of this disorder. Dr. Judith Rapoport, a member of the Naitonal Institute of Mental Health’s Child Psychiatry Branch is just one of the many researchers working to see what the difference might be between children who are able to, and those who continue their life with an ADHD diagnosis.

From this study itself, even I can see that there is clearly a biological root in ADHD. The three- to five-percent of school age children who are now living with this disorder are clearly not just “acting out� or making it up. However, smart health consumers must remember that one study doesn’t prove everything, and getting an MRI just to tell if your child’s brain is developing at the “proper rate� isn’t the answer to all of your problems. This study in particular only measured the cortex thickness of 446 children (half diagnosed with ADHD and half “control� children). With eight- to ten-percent of the total population living with ADHD, testing is hardly complete.

To read more about specifics in brain development, follow the link to the news story itself!

mental & emotional health, ADHD, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, brain scans, MRI