ADHD Spotlight

I came across this one a a result from one of my Google web alerts. Lots of depth to the ADHD content….

ADHD Spotlight

Dr. Brian B. Doyle is a psychiatrist, a clinician and teacher who graduated from Harvard College and McGill University, Faculty of Medicine. He has written numerous articles and monographs, especially on the affective and anxiety disorders and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Coeditor of The Impaired Physician, his new book, Understanding and Treating Adults with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, was published in June 2006. He is in his tenth year as the host of “Medical Answers,” a nationwide television program on the Public Broadcasting System. He has received awards for excellence in teaching from Georgetown University School of Medicine, the International Society of Business Communicators and the American Psychiatric Association. Military honors include the Meritorious Service Medal and the General Staff Insignia. Formerly on the faculty of Harvard and George Washington University medical schools, he is now Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and of Family and Community Medicine at Georgetown University School of Medicine. Dr. Doyle maintains an active private practice in Washington, DC, specializing in mood and anxiety disorders and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. He currently serves as President of the National Association of Medical Communicators.

Neurological Basis for ADHD?

Regarding a new National Institute for Mental Health Report:

Technology Review: A Neurological Basis for ADHD
A genetic variation that boosts risk for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) paradoxically appears to predict who will grow out of the learning disability. Scientists found that brain development in ADHD-afflicted children with this variation was out of whack at age 8 but normalized by 16. ADHD symptoms in this group were also more likely to disappear with age. The study is the first to identify a genetically determined pattern of brain development linked to ADHD and indicates a real neurological basis for the disorder, which has been viewed by some as a contrivance of pharmaceutical marketers or the product of bad parenting.

…. and a related post at another blog ….

Outgrowing ADHD?
Isn’t that interesting? But also don’t forget that finding that young gifted kids were more likely to have a late blooming pattern in terms of their frontal cortical development (executive function). So how should this impact our expectations? our educational process? or medical treatments?

Latebloomers.com

…. and also….

The Biology of Late Bloomers – Gifted, but Immature?
This may not come as a complete surprise to some parents of gifted children. In a press release that is now racing around the Internet, NIMH researchers show us that the higher one’s I.Q., the more immature prefrontal cortex development…at least age 7. Aha.