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.
Haven't... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I dont get it? (Score:3, Interesting)
better diagnosis reduced the number of cases (Score:4, Interesting)
There have been countless studies that indicate that ADHD is a neurological disorder the problem is when no physical tests are used in diagnosis people can more easily get labeled as having it when it is in fact a product of the education system.
On another note some cases of ADHD do not go away after adolescence and can impact work performance and social interactions. Also, the more popular illness for students currently is autism since it is not as easily identifiable as actual ADHD.
Re:Overdiagnosis... (Score:2, Interesting)
When they can't make money selling drugs for it.
jesus (Score:4, Interesting)
do i really have to read bullshit comments like "Darkness404" here on slashdot?
by reading here i always got the feeling ppl are more openminded.
im a 27 year old adult and finally got last year ADHD diagnosed. my life was hell before that, altho able of many many things failing at all of them. falling behind everyones and mine expectations. fail fail fail fail.
do you people really believe ADHD only happens in schools/class ? it affects our social life, work , etc, basically everything.
So i got this super high IQ, but because of my ADHD (till now) i never had any work better than a bullshit clerk job, forced to be surrounded by stupidity every day and even failing at those retarded jobs. thats a very nice feeling, and doesnt hurt at all, really. when i hear parents talk that they try to "heal" their kids without ritalin (or whatever) i would love to take them their kids away, they have no fucking clue what they are ruining.
so fuck you people who think ADHD is just a symptom of the education system or just a hype, or whatever. really. educate yourself, try to talk to people who suffer.
you cant imagine how much more i am accomplising now that im on ritalin.
(posting as coward because of no account)
Re:getting through high school (Score:3, Interesting)
It's important to understand the basics of chemistry and biology so you know when you are being lied to by the media.
Re:get rid of shitty teachers (Score:5, Interesting)
My own anecdotes.
I do think that it's getting over diagnosed these days, but I was diagnosed with it "back in the day". I thank my parents when I can for not putting me on anything.
Even when I'm running the meetings I will find I will stare directly at the person talking and have no clue what they were talking about because in the last 30 seconds my mind has been on 50 different subjects, mostly about other work I'm doing.
ADHD is akin to having a little buzzer in your head that tells you you have to switch tasks or at least what you're thinking about. Some (good) days the timer is set to a nice 5 minutes. Meaning I can get in a solid 5 minutes of programming. Worst case days it's set at 30 seconds. Meaning every 30 seconds I have to switch what I'm either thinking about or doing. If I'm in the middle of a line of code. I have to check my e-mail. Go to the bathroom. Look around the room. Wonder why the light in that socket is out. Read the posters in my cube. Look at other peoples posters. EVERY 30 SECONDS. Having concurrent 'things' going helps. (Watching movies, etc) because I can listen to the movie and still keep working on what I'm working on.
I agree, it's hard for even 'normal' people to concentrate on boring stuff. The difference is that there are times that there are things I enjoy and should be concentrating on. Worst case scenario is sex. (And this should trigger some +5 Funny's at my expense) But there are some times where my mind is jumping to what is that noise downstairs, did I switch over the laundry, what am I having for dinner, etc. And trust me, it's not fun.
I'm looking at going back to grad school, and I honestly don't think I'd be able to do it. I'm going to talk to my primary care physician and see if I can test out some of the ADHD drugs. If they improve my concentration at work. I just don't want something that takes a while to 'build up'. I more or less want to be able to say "this is a concentration day" pop a pill in the morning and concentrate at work, and on the weekends be able to do my own thing.
(Since starting this post. I've responded to 2 business & 4 personal e-mails. Checked when the best time to plant garlic is (came up this weekend). Updated the mysql pages for a website I run. Opened 3 other php files. Opened the Facebook API page. And launched 2 instances of Matlab. I have 3 rows in my Windows task bar full.)
There is no such thing as ADHD. (Score:2, Interesting)
Administering neurotoxins to healthy children is child abuse and should be treated as such.
The funny thing is, so many people say "oh yes, you're right, 99% of ADHD diagnoses are really just misunderstood children" but then their "ADHD" child always seems to be part of that last 1 percent. Nope, sorry, doesn't work that way, no exceptions. If you label a child "ADHD" you are an incompetent parent or teacher. Period.
Re:get rid of shitty teachers (Score:4, Interesting)
The major difference being the the ADD/ADHD folks can focus fantastically well on something that interests them (like raiding for example).
In my experience, untreated ADD/ADHD means that while you can *sometimes* do that, it's not something you really have control over. IE it's not just interest (or lack thereof) in something, there is some other quality that determines whether you can do the hyper-focus thing on it.
I was diagnosed as having ADD as an adult, and I take prescription stimulants to correct for it. I've been overwhelmingly happy with the results - it's no longer a matter of rolling the dice to see if I can keep something (e.g. math, electronics) in my head long enough to get a handle on it. The problem I have now is finding time to study and make use of all the interests I have.
I have a lot of mixed feelings about whether I should have started taking them at an earlier age. On the one hand, I tend to agree with the people who think giving young people ADD medication tends to turn them into robots when they might have been more creative otherwise. On the other, looking back I notice that I ended up using a *lot* of caffeine anyway (enough to have more of a health effect than the prescription I take now).
If I'd had access to something more effective at the time, I might have gone in a very different direction, career-wise. Whether that's a good, bad, or neutral thing is more subjective, but there is definitely a window in the late teens/early 20s in which someone with ADD is going to limit or eliminate potential career options by their choice of medication or not.
Re:I can't belive I have to step in here to say th (Score:4, Interesting)
Not only can you detect ADHD with EEG, but you can treat it.
Fun fact: Hungary does not recognize the thing you're trying to treat. It simply does not exist here. Although we do have something similar, we call that boredom, and it's not a disease.
And most of the parents would personally beat the shit out of you for even suggesting drugging their children.
I think it's the kind of people who have the authority about these decisions that are different, not the children.
Re:getting through high school (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure, history is nice to know and the basis is almost necessary in order to make political choices, but does that really affect your day to day living unless you are a historian?
I was chatting with a historian just Sunday about this very question, and came up with an excellent answer: Proper study of history is the study of sources. That is, when you have two competing descriptions of the same events, who do you believe? Or what do you do when a document is credible except for a couple of numbers being way off? How do you determine which sources are independent from each other, and which depend on the same primary report? In other words, studying history (the right way, not the boring memorize-dates way) hones your extremely important BS detection skills.
Re:get rid of shitty teachers (Score:5, Interesting)
I spent split time in public and private schools. I was paddled one and only one time in school, and it was one of the reasons I went back into private schools for a time. I was in the second grade and was given the assignment to draw a man with two orange heads. This was on a day of a parent teacher conference near Halloween and the teacher wanted some art for the walls to make it seem like she did something other than have us work on stupid worksheets all day long, day after day. Well, everyone else in the class drew a man, normal in every way, other than in place of a head, he had two heads, and they were orange jack-o-lanterns. I, however, drew a normal man. He held, in each hand, an orange head. So, for drawing a man with two orange heads, I was ordered to the principals office for a paddling. I failed to follow directions.
When teachers send kids to get beaten because their directions are followed exactly, but they don't like the result, the system failed. To allow administrators to beat children for such stupid reasons should be illegal. There is nothing that justifies such actions. Oh, and they didn't notify my parents before or after. So yes, please bring back discipline. However, the paddle is not correlated with discipline, not even weakly. It's just abuse, and is abused.
Re:get rid of shitty teachers (Score:3, Interesting)
In my experience, untreated ADD/ADHD means that while you can *sometimes* do that, it's not something you really have control over. IE it's not just interest (or lack thereof) in something, there is some other quality that determines whether you can do the hyper-focus thing on it.
From experience and observation, the hyper-focus tends to come into play more frequently for things the individual in question considers fun, with an especial frequency for video games.
While it's not controlled, the things it usually snaps into place for have a tendency to become the preferred leisure activities.
Got me a great story (Score:3, Interesting)
When I was in kindergarten, my parents were called up to attend a meeting with my teacher. The teacher had noticed I was being particularly irritable, twitching my head a lot, unable to keep still, and so not being able to remain focused on what I was suppose to be doing. I was being continually distracted and annoyed by something the teacher couldn't work out, so his diagnosis was that I had a learning disability and required medication/therapy.
Fortunately, the parents were suspicious of this, and so they asked me why I was having trouble keeping still. My answer? The little tag on the back inside of my shirt was annoying me by always flicking my neck. They cut the tag off, and the problem went away.
So this teacher, who didn't even bother to try and simply ASK me why I couldn't keep still, jumped to the conclusion that I had a learning/behavioral disability and needed treatment through drugs and therapy. I believe this was before the era of ADD/ADHD (or at least before they invented a name for the condition), but the conclusion was the same. I'm proud of my parents for not listening to this idiot.
Re:get rid of shitty teachers (Score:3, Interesting)