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According to the Attention
Deficit Disorder (ADD) Information Center, 3% to 10% of the U.S.
population is affected with ADD and its many forms (ADHD/LD).
As a result, an estimated 20 million children may be placed on
activity-modifying drugs like Methlyphenidate before the year
2000.
ADD-specific pharmaceuticals
have been suspected of retarding growth of ADD individuals, which
ironically is the last thing you would want to do with individuals
who have been neurally limited! Amphetamines, antidepressants
or anticonvulsants normally prescribed for ADD have been shown
to detrimentally diminish cognitive activity and exhibit harmful
side effects, such as nervousness, insomnia and anorexia.
Are ADD Drugs Being
Overprescribed?
Attention Deficit is big business in
the U.S. where therapies for ADD/ADHD have reached $2 billion.
In Europe, Attention Deficit diagnosis is only one-tenth as common
as it is in the U.S., and in Japan, the disorder has barely been
noted. Consumption of the mood-altering drug Methlyphenidate in
the U.S. versus the rest of the world has become so disparate
that the Vienna-based International Narcotics Control Board has
asked American authorities to monitor it to be certain it is being
properly prescribed.
Is it ADD or Normal
Kid Behavior?
Is your child
fidgety? Does he interrupt? Is he loud and unruly? Then, according
to some groups, your child suffers from attention deficit disorder.
Yet other groups contend that this describes normal, albeit undisciplined,
child behavior, especially for little boys who historically are
more loud and rambunctious than little girls. Some physicians
are concerned that little boys are being put on Methlyphenidate
for acting like little boys: among children under the age of 16,
boys account for 80% of Methlyphenidate consumption.
Is Methlyphenidate
being prescribed for children who truly need it or more often
as a quick fix for frazzled parents? As the parent of a child
exhibiting ADD symptoms, you need to understand what is happening
within your child to possibly be causing such behavior, and also
explore all available alternatives for getting your child the
help he or she needs.
What is Attention
Deficit?
Attention Deficit (and its many forms: ADD/ADHD/LD) is a dysfunction
of the Central Nervous System (CNS), most specifically the Reticular
Activating System, which results in difficulty maintaining attention,
concentrating, learning and remembering, as well as processing
and sorting out incoming information or stimulus from both an
individual's inner (subjective) and outer (objective) worlds.
It may manifest itself in undue passivity or inattentiveness,
or unruly, uncontrollable, aggressive hyperactivity. Attention
Deficit is often overly frustrating, overwhelming and stressful
to affected individuals, resulting in significant emotional and
psychological problems. Thus, Attention Deficit globally interferes
with all forms of learning, both academic and experiential, including
the processes of socialization.
The Causes Of Attention
Deficit
Attention Deficit
is a limiting metabolic dysfunction of the Reticular Activating
System, the center of consciousness that coordinates learning
and memory, and which normally supplies the appropriate neural
connections necessary for smooth information processing and clear,
non-stressful attention. This metabolic dysfunction first restricts
the development of neural connections (the "wiring hardware")
and the required neural density needed for efficient, multi-varied
processing. Secondly, this "wiring" limitation subsequently
leads to neurotransmitter production imbalances (the "software"
which turns the hardware "on" and "off," such
as dopamine and norepinephrine) and faulty neuro-buffering, which
produces further imbalances in right and left hemispheric processing.
The Reticular Activating
System appears to be intimately involved in the neural mechanisms
which produce consciousness and focused attention, receiving impulses
from the spinal cord and relaying them to the Thalamus, and from
there to the Cortex, and back again in a feedback loop to the
Hippocampus/Thalamus/Hypothalamus and participating neural structures
in order for learning and memory to take place. Without continual
excitation of cortical neurons by reticular activating impulses,
an individual is unconscious and cannot be aroused. When stimulation
is enough for consciousness, but not enough for attentiveness,
ADD or LD results. If too activated, an individual cannot relax
or concentrate (and is overstimulated or hyperactive) often resulting
in ADHD.
How This "Hardware"
Deprivation Affects Learning and Memory
Memory and associative patterns (engrams) constantly require newly
generated neural connections within the brain with increasing
amounts of neurotransmitters and buffers to serve those connections
(synapses). When neural building materials are lacking, demand
for further connectivity cannot easily be fulfilled, interfering
with the efficient processing of information, and frustrating
the Attention Deficited individual, making learning enormously
difficult, if not impossible. In other words, neural "hardware"
remains in limited production (there's not enough of it), and
the supply of new "wiring" cannot keep up with the demand
(increasing stimulus or "traffic") for new neural connections
within the Central Nervous System (CNS). Thus, demands for new
learning, memory, and the management of information processing
cannot be satisfied.
The Effects Of Not
Having Enough "Hardware Connections"
Insufficient
"connections" result in existing neural pathways being
repeatedly overworked and overstressed, often resulting in complete
gridlock or shutdown so that nothing gets processed thereafter.
This, most noticeably, generates frustration, bewilderment and
behavioral problems.
Although Attention
Deficit starts in the brain, it really involves the entire sensorium
(vision, smell, touch, hearing, etc.) as well as the inner world
of cognition and emotion. When deprived of the required number
of neural connections needed to process the "traffic"
smoothly, competition between various stimuli results. Overly
competitive stimulation from multiple external and internal sources
(too much visual stimulation, too much sound stimulation, too
many internal feelings and emotions, etc.) can cause undue frustration,
irritation, aggression and anxiety. When the brain, or more specifically,
the limited neural network or "wiring," is overly taxed
in this regard, it becomes unable to "tune in" or focus
on some stimulation, while "tuning out," or "turning
down" (attenuating) other stimulation.
This lack of ability
to focus on some particular stimulus while attenuating others
creates undue "noise" in the perceptual systems within
the brain. For the Attention Deficited individual, this perceptual
"neural-noise" is so undifferentiated, so overly noxious
and continuous, that it appears to be assaultive, crippling any
attempt to concentrate on one stimulus while attenuating others.
So intrusive and uncontrollable is this "noise" that
feelings of helplessness and anxiety are often overwhelming, forcing
an Attention Deficited individual to look for ways in which to
survive the assaulting nature of their world.
A number of strategies
are possible, but two are generally the most common and most easily
documented. The first is that of an ADHD individual. ADHD's are
hypothesized to have ample supplies of Acetylcholine and clear,
lipofuscin-free, unobstructed Cholinergic pathways, allowing them
to actively compete and overwhelm the intrusive messages from
outside. Thus, ADHD individuals attempt to operate at a "noisier"
or "more active" level (becoming intensely hyperactive)
in order to compensate for the "noise" in their world.
Most simply, ADHD individuals are, for the most part, simply trying
to "shout-down" the crowded array of competing stimulation
within their brain. And they usually win, although only for the
short term. The more they assert themselves over the "noise,"
the more tired and worn they become.
But the picture is
slightly different for the ADD and LD individual. ADD's and LD's
are hypothesized to have low Acetylcholine levels and adverse
lipofuscin populations within the Cholinergic neural pathways,
making a competitive response more difficult and trying. Here,
another strategy of deflection is practiced. For both an ADD and
LD individual, it becomes so "noisy" that it becomes
necessary to shut down all processing of the senses altogether,
avoiding and deflecting all stimulation. For both these individuals,
the incessant cacophony of "neural-noises" produces
a powerfully competitive "numbing," almost hypnotic,
agent, wearing out neural sensitivities and response probabilities
far faster than for ADHD individuals, disallowing any further
stimulus differentiation to occur or responsive attention to take
place. Simply "giving-up" to the competitively powerful
undifferentiated "white-neural-noise" being generated
by their sensorium becomes the only option - no other strategies
are available because the neural-thresholds of the sensorium have
over-fired and can no longer be sustained. Thus, unlike other
children, the ADD and LD individuals simply "shutdown"
and "tune-out," producing high Theta and/or Alpha brain
waves.
To summarize, the inattentiveness, restlessness, distractibility
and "unmanageability" which is so often the overriding
picture of the ADD/ADHD/LD child and adult, is often just the
manifestation of a perceptual "survival" strategy needed
by individuals "drowning" in a sea of intrusively aggressive
stimulus "noise" which is too overwhelming to sort through
or manage.
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