Company Claims EEG Scans Can Help Identify ADHD 373
Al writes "Technology Review has an article about a company hoping to expand the clinical use of electroencephalography. Thanks to better sensor technologies, data-processing techniques, and more detailed knowledge of the brain, EEG is expanding into completely new areas. A startup called ElMindA, is developing an EEG system to help doctors diagnose attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Scientists have also used ElMindA's system to characterize brain-activity patterns in patients with ADHD, identifying statistical parameters that differ between normal people and those with ADHD." If "normal people" can sit through high-school classes without being distracted and grumpy, count me out.
Re:Haven't... (Score:2, Informative)
Schools do not teach you how to learn, at least not the public schools in the USA. They teach you how to fill in a blank, how to guess the right choice, how to cram for some useless test, how to score high on a standardized test, etc. We must remember that societies, throughout all time are like a pyramid, at the base are the people who can't do anything, above them are the people who do a lot of things but can't do them well, then above them are the people who can do a lot of things but do them well, above them are the people who do one thing and can do it well. Our education system was designed to move people up the pyramid, sadly we stop at giving a lot of varied education but no one does it well. Most people who are diagnosed with ADHD don't fit into that, they do one thing and do it well. If there is one thing history has told us it is that things change, jobs are destroyed but even more are created and those who do well at the job that was destroyed will find their place easily in one thats created from the destruction.
ADHD is REAL (Score:1, Informative)
I know, I have it. I've been on ritalin for over 20 years... I take the same small dose now that I took in 2nd grade.
ADD can be tested for... they have standardized tests and I've seen my results from childhood compared to non ADD kids and it's completely obvious. Granted my doctor has often said I'm a "textbook case". Ritalin is a safe effective way of treating kids that have had proper testing/diagnoses... in fact ritalin is very old and very widely tested and is very, very safe. The problem is that lazy people misdiagnose kids with ADD all the time because they have behavior problems or whatever.. without getting proper testing.. that is a problem and I'm against all the un-necessary medicating of our youth.
In summary, proper diagnosis and treatment changed my life. I became a straight-A student almost overnight after starting medication... and I've never needed an increased dose (another sign that I actually need it... kids without ADD will need more and more drugs)
My wife didn't believe ADD was real until she met me.
ADHD *is* real (Score:1, Informative)
While I agree that ADHD is misdiagnosed at incredible rates, it is definitely a real disorder. My wife has a good friend who has it as an adult. She's just full on, high energy all the time; but she can't focus. We visited their family a few years ago, and their study was half painted, not in a nice neat fashion, but like someone started painting it, and then just put the brush down and never got back to it. When we asked her husband about it, he said, "Yeah, she started that months ago."
This is just one particular example, but this is the way she lived her whole life. She'd start things, but finishing them was a problem, and it wasn't from getting tired out, because she was never tired out. She just kept moving from thing to thing. I suppose once she would have been called 'flighty' or something like that, but clearly this isn't normal behavior. Her daughter has been diagnosed as well, and having observed her and knowing her mother, I think it is a good diagnosis. There are a lot of bad ones, but don't assume that ADHD doesn't exist just because a lot of the cases that get diagnosed as it aren't really it.
If a test can show differences in brain activity, that's a good thing because hopefully it can cut down on the number of false positives.
Re:Excercise... (Score:1, Informative)
I wish it were that easy. Unfortunately, ADHD is all too often used as a label for "hyper" kids. In those cases, yes, adequate physical exercise / activity helps tremendously with "symptoms" in the classroom. It's been described somewhat in earlier posts as well, but ADHD realy relates to the inability to associate actions and thoughts. ADHD children will frequently do something and have absolutely no idea why they did it because the thoughts and the actions don't really mix. The "H" in ADHD applies to children with the additional complication of being very "figity". It doesn't necessarily mean they are "hyper" or that they have a lot of pent-up engergy. They just have very little control over the small physical things (can't stay in their chair, babbling all the time, etc.) Those symptoms by themselves are probably what is most commonly mistaken for just needing to work out the jitters. But try raising a child who really truly does have ADHD and you'll quickly learn to tell the difference. What you may find interesting is that the number of ADHD diagnoses sky-rocketed immediately after the federal board of education added ADHD to the list of disorders that qualify for special financial assistance. That decision, not surprisingly, was direct result of significant lobbying by the companies that make the common ADHD medications.
So yes, there is a large class of people incorrectly diagnosed with ADHD. And yes, I agree that things are exacerbated by the structure of our education system. However, there is also a very real disorder that is perhaps not very well named but is no less impactful to children (and adult) who suffer from it.
And just to bring this full circle, now that my daughter is being treated for it, she actually gets much more exercise as a result, because she is better able to participate with other children and focus long enough for physical activity to actually be enjoyable and meaningful to her.