ADHD or Intelligent?

I have often wondered if I suffer from ADHD, since I often fidget when sitting down and get distracted when I find a lecture boring. Often in conversations I forget names, and when reading boring school textbooks I easily get distracted. I was a hyperactive kid and often got in trouble in class, only certain classes captured my attention, those that were a challenge and I considered interesting. Growing up I thought I was just hyperactive, but as time passed and I stopped being hyperactive I started noticing these things. The weird thing is I get good grades, so how can I have the ADHD symptoms but perform so well in school, often without hard effort?

I found a psychological study on SONA called Attention Difficulties and Social Concerns. I took the online part of the experiment which asked questions that you would expect to get at a doctor's or psychology specialist's visit in trying to diagnose ADHD. A few weeks later I got an invitation to participate in the in-lab study, I was interested to find out if I had ADHD or not so I was looking forward to participating in the study.

However, I remembered that in psychology, not everything is exactly as theories predict, so I decided to do some research on my own, how is it possible that through all my life I have gotten good grades and often without hard work? If I had ADHD then that wouldn't be possible. However I found and article that states that you can be intelligent and be mistaken for having ADHD or you can be intellng and also have ADHD.

Because of this I decided to not participate in the study since it was not focusing on measuring intelligence, it was mainly just an Attention Difficulties Study. I will instead wait later on to find a professional to find out once and for all which of the two I have. But in the end, you can't let such a thing affect you in your school and career.

Bad Sleeping Habits and Shrinking Brains

College is a time where sleep can be minimal. Whether it is cramming for a big exam or choosing to hang out with friends, sleep can get pushed aside for these social or necessary academic events. While humans obviously need sleep to function and stay healthy, it’s not always our first priority. This study grabbed my attention because of the lack of sleep that comes with being in college and the insomnia problems within my own family. The following is a summary of the study published this year in the journal, Neurology.

Researchers in Norway recruited 147 Norwegian citizens to participate in this study. Participants were between the ages of 20 and 84 years old. Researchers were testing whether poor sleeping habits correlated with cortical atrophy. On their first visit, participants were given an MRI scan. Then around 3.5 years later they were invited back for another MRI scan. At the second visit, researchers administered a couple of questionnaires to participants such as the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Inventory and a physical activity questionnaire. Their findings were interesting. Researchers found that poor sleep quality, which includes sleep latency, duration, and efficiency, does in fact correlate with cortical atrophy. The right superior frontal lobe decreased in size and the rate of atrophy increased in the frontal, temporal, and parietal lobes. The rate of atrophy increased with age as well with adults over sixty being more susceptible. The amount of physical activity of an individual had no effect on the results of the study.

The question that researchers still have is what causes what.  A correlation between these two variables was established, not a cause and effect relationship. Researchers are interested in knowing if brain atrophy is causing poor sleep quality, poor sleep quality is causing brain atrophy, or if there is a third, confounding variable. For example, psychiatric or neurodegenerative diseases can have an effect. It would be interesting to see further research conducted on this topic and the authors of the article state that sleep interventions need to be developed to help prevent cortical atrophy especially in older adults.  

https://www.aan.com/PressRoom/home/PressRelease/1305

Green Tea and Working Memory

I was told before I came to college that I would start drinking coffee and lots of it to get through my day. Surprisingly, I am not addicted to coffee after three years of being in college, but I do have a habit of drinking tea almost every day. While green tea is not my favorite (I prefer black tea or the occasional chai to get me through my day), I was immediately intrigued by this study. If there is some sort of health benefit to my tea drinking habit, then that is good news. Even if it means that I need to start enjoying the occasional cup of green tea.

Researchers at the University of Basel in Switzerland have found that green tea extract can enhance working memory. Their findings published in the journal, Psychopharmacology, are based off of an experiment in where male volunteers drank soda with several grams of green tea extract mixed in. Then they participated in a few working memory tasks and an MRI scan. Researchers found that there was increased connectivity between the parietal and frontal lobe. We all know that the frontal lobe is the part of the brain that controls our executive functions and decision-making tasks while the parietal lobe is involved in processing sensory information such as touch and directing our movements. The article stated that findings may suggest that green tea extract may enhance short term synaptic plasticity as well, the ability of synapses to change over time and become stronger or weaker depending on their activity.

It may seem like a small finding, but if further research is conducted this could mean that green tea could play a role in treating neuropsychiatric disorders like dementia. While I think this study is interesting, I want to know why female volunteers were not used in the study. And if they were, would the results be different based on gender? I am also skeptical on how a few grams of green tea extract could have this effect on people so I am interested to see if any research is conducted to try and understand the neural mechanism behind this finding. While the study claimed green tea extract increases connectivity between the frontal and parietal lobes, it did not explain the neural mechanism behind the results.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140407101545.htm

Circadian Rhythms and Memory

Circadian rhythms can be behavioral, mental, of physical changes that occur at about a 24-hour cycle and respond to a stimulus in the environment. Much of the time it is the lightness and darkness of an environment that triggers parts of a circadian rhythm. Because of this, daylight savings may have some effect on our circadian rhythm, requiring us to get used to the daylight shortage.

Scientists at Stanford University are taking a closer look at what all circadian rhythms can involve. Using Siberian hamsters, scientists were able to change circadian rhythms enough so that there was some sort of inhibition of memory. They have been able to identify the part of the brain that controls the circadian rhythm and connect it to memory and learning. They have discovered that when this clock does not work, it creates memory loss.

Patients with memory loss diseases often complain about poor sleep and other symptoms that can be related back to problems with circadian rhythms. This experiment with hamsters, has made scientists create an even stronger connection between memory and the rhythms because they have been trying to treat memory disorders by fixing circadian clocks. What is interesting is that when the scientists removed this part of the brain, the hamsters memory seemed to return fully. Because of this, these scientists are hoping to create new therapies for people with diseases like Alzheimer's, etc.

I found this article interesting because there is no cure for memory disorders. The research being done nowadays seems promising and will hopefully lead to some sort of cure and either stop or decrease memory loss in patients with diseases like Alzheimer's. If more research is done on this experiment and the same results show, I believe that it could be a good way of restoring memory in humans. However, as with anything, there would probably be other side effects from disrupting circadian rhythms that would cause some trouble.


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141118110007.htm

Visual Processes Get a Little More Complicated

As we just got finished discussing in class, our visual processes are rather complicated. The pathways that information from our visual sensors take in order for us to make sense of what we are seeing can take a bit of time to grasp. In order to turn our visual senses into cognitive recognitions, many different sections of the brain are involved and work together. Recently, scientists from Stanford University say that they have found indeed another visual processing pathway beginning in the occipital lobe of all of the brains that were examined.

The large bundle of fibers that were rediscovered was done so only by using an MRI. The fibers are now known as the vertical occipital fasciculus, however it took some time and research in order to figure out what exactly it was that the scientists were looking at. The answer to their question was found in an old atlas written by Carl Wernicke. Wernicke's findings of the vertical occipital fasciculus went against another neuroanatomist, Theodore Meynert, who stated that brain connections could only travel from the front of the brain to the back--not vertical. Although this created some confusion, these scientists were able to find what they were looking at in different atlases, just under several different names.

Using diffusion-weighted imaging they were able to view the length and locations of this visual pathway. It turns out that it connects the brain regions needed for seeing different objects and other regions that deal with focusing attention on a certain object. In general, it is believed that the vertical occipital fasciculus is involved in facial recognition and other perceptual processes.

I found this article interesting because it shows that although we have been doing research on the brain for centuries, there is still more to learn. Even though the VOF was seen a while ago, the rediscovery of it may bring about new information on how we see things because of the vast amount of technology we have today that we didn't have back then. It also makes you wonder how this pathway was forgotten in the first place or why it wasn't brought to attention earlier. Is it that important if it is just now being brought to light again? We may know a lot about the brain, however I believe that there is still a lot more to be learned.





http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141118091343.htm