Friday, November 16, 2007

ADHD Brains Might Need More Growing Time

Scientists are divided on what causes attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which affects 3 to 5 percent of school-age children. Some say it's a developmental delay, while others argue that the brains of children with ADHD are abnormal from the start. One puzzle: Some, but not all, kids seem to "grow out" of the disorder, which can cause restlessness, inattention, and difficulty focusing. An intriguing new finding by researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health, reported in today's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that for about half of kids with ADHD, the troubling symptoms they experience in childhood could be a result simply of slower—but otherwise normal—maturation of the brain.

What should harried parents make of the findings? U.S. News asked Judith Rapoport, a coauthor of the study and chief of the child psychology branch at the National Institute of Mental Health. She has pioneered efforts to study the relationship between brain structure and mental disorders.

Rapoport cautions that the research is in the early stages. The delays, which put areas of the brain used in higher order decision making behind schedule by an average of three years, were most evident in areas at the front of the brain's outer covering, or cortex, that house the ability to control thinking, attention, and planning. In some of the children and teens with ADHD, the brain regions reached peak thickness when the children averaged 10.5 years old, compared with 7.5 in children without ADHD.

READ MORE @ US NEWS & WORLD REPORT