The Garden of Education

How Do ADD Brains Differ from Average Brains?

Although there is as yet no definitive answer to this question.  As a group, ADDers MAY have less activity in certain parts of their brain while they are asked to perform tedious math problems or other dull exercises.  (I've yet to see any researcher examine what ADD brains look like while engaged in something they find interesting.)  I say MAY because the quality of research has been generally poor and misleading.  For example, in one highly publicized study that showed less brain activity in ADD children, all of the children on the study had abruptly been removed from Ritalin 24 hours before the test.  It is possible that their brains had adjusted physically to the Ritalin and were in a state of withdrawal during the test.  I find it interesting that when a different study showed brain differences in people who use methamphetamine (speed), the researchers concluded that the speed had damaged their brains. Yet when Ritalin users brains were examined, the researchers assumed that the brain differences were due to ADD. 

When reading studies that purport to explain ADD brain difference, bear in mind that:

1) In most studies, the ADDers studied are SEVERELY dysfunctional and are therefore NOT representative of the typical child who is routinely diagnosed with ADD. 

2) Most of the people studied for ADD also have depression and/or anxiety.  Both of these conditions significantly impact how the brain performs, so the results may indicate more about depression and anxiety than about ADD.

3) Many children studied also have learning disorders, so the brain differences found may be due to their learning disorders, and not to ADD.   Again, the data is confused.

4) Successful ADDers are excluded from study, because no one is really interested in them.

5) The medication that the children had been taking for ADD may have caused brain differences.

6) Some brain differences may be temporary and subject to environmental influences.  Glucose activity is impacted by diet and metabolism.   Dopamine activity is also impacted by diet.  Even thoughts have a powerful impact on the brain: Brain scans of  obsessive-compulsive folks before and after psychoanalysis showed that training people to think differently actually changed their brain scan. Brains may also change temporarily when someone is having an allergic reaction.  Doris Rapp, M.D. documented alterations in EEG tests while children were challenged with allergens.  The EEG results corresponded with dramatic behavior changes in the children, including hyperactivity. (Source: Is this Your Child? Discovering and Treating Unrecognized Allergies in Children and Adults by Doris Rapp).

7) The brain is very poorly understood and there is no good data pool for normally functioning people. In other words, scientists have no idea at what point normal brain diversity ends and abnormalities start because they haven't studied very many normal brains. Instead, they typically study a very small control group.   The control group only demonstrate what is average, not what is perhaps unusual but otherwise normal.  Einstein had some very unusual brain differences which could have been interpreted as either defects or differences depending on the bias of the researcher (his overall brain size was average).