My list is a bit different, but yeah, noticed a lot of overlap in a few things that feel familiar to me either now or from my past, but no one has ever suspected me of having ADHD, presumably because I get lots of stuff done. Does make me suspect ADHD is made up of a cluster of behaviors that are common and we only consider it ADHD when a bunch of them are present, rather than something with a single causal mechanism. Maybe this is already what people think about ADHD; I’ve not learned about it much as it hasn’t seemed personally relevant to me.
There is a known physiological cause, though. A 30% smaller brain volume/developmen than appropriate for your age in five distinct brain regions. There’s also consideration of splitting apart SCT and ADHD. And of course, there’s common comorbidities. And personally I believe, ADHD genes are just executing a high-variance strategy. [as being mildly brain-damaged leads to interesting neurological adaptations and tradeoffs]
By your description, that sounds exactly like multiple causes coming together to produce a disorder where less than all of nearly all of those causes would not be a disorder, even if they causes some difficulties.
[epsitemic status: mainly paraphrasing what Dr. Barkley is saying in those videos (worth watching!), maybe look deeper into the research for the claims he makes for a better/more precise understanding of the science, but that’s above my paygrade/interests]
No, from my understanding, ADHD is a single trait, that specifically affects those five affected brain regions, predictably leading to specific deficits in executive function. those are: Right Frontal Lobe (Orbital Prefrontal Cortex) Basal Ganglia (Mainly Striatum and Globus Pallidum) Cerebellum (central vermis area, more on right side) Anterior Cingulate Cortex Corpus Callosum (Primary Anterior Splenium)
And ADHD is also shown to be hereditary. So ADHD is best understood as an alternative neurological phenotype, given the prevalence, not an uncommon one. [Barkley doesn’t put it like that, but that part is just semantics]
You can’t spot the difference in an individual, because there’s too much variance in how brains usually look like/different areas are sized, but this “five affected brain regions”-pattern becomes apparent, when they looked at scans of a lot of people having the ADHD diagnosis and people who don’t have it.
You can focus on the “disorder”-part of the word, but whether it gets in your way enough to be diagnosed and called a disorder, strongly depends on your coping skills, your environment and also your goals. For example, if your life is about being an idle rich person, who surfs on the beach and lazes around all day, there’s no need to get you on Ritallin.
But put someone in a school setting or work place where they must pay attention, they’ll have difficulty meeting expectations in a very predictable manner.
And also there’s presumably a second disorder called SCT, which is posited as being a second “Execuitve Disorder”-disfunciton, where people are slow and very dreamy. And that can appear with, but also independent of ADHD (and ADHD doesn’t have to include SCT). But also also, people don’t like SCT, because try diagnosing someone’s kid with “Sluggish Cognitive Tempo”-disorder without calling them stupid. [ADHD doesn’t have a correlation to IQ, SCT I’m not sure..… also those labels are somewhat controversial and not everyone will use the same methodology, cause psychiatry is a sprawl]
And having ADHD increases risk of having other mental disorders, but this can partly be blamed on failing so hard, because you have ADHD. [a life of constant failure isn’t great for the psyche and all that, but maybe it’s the different neurology too]
EDIT: Also apparently 1⁄3 of ADHD cases happen because of a neuro strep-infection causing an autoimmune reaction that destroys those parts, during pregnancy. If that’s the case, there’s a high likelihood of seizures, too. Those acquired cases seem to also be lumped together. Won’t claim I fully understand, if/why that makes sense.
Okay, yes, as explained then that does seem to point in the direction of a single causal mechanism rather than a collection of symptoms that across some threshold add up to ADHD.
I’ve never been evaluated for ADHD (or seriously considered it) but some of these—especially 2, 3, 6, 7, 9 -- feel very familiar to me.
My list is a bit different, but yeah, noticed a lot of overlap in a few things that feel familiar to me either now or from my past, but no one has ever suspected me of having ADHD, presumably because I get lots of stuff done. Does make me suspect ADHD is made up of a cluster of behaviors that are common and we only consider it ADHD when a bunch of them are present, rather than something with a single causal mechanism. Maybe this is already what people think about ADHD; I’ve not learned about it much as it hasn’t seemed personally relevant to me.
There is a known physiological cause, though. A 30% smaller brain volume/developmen than appropriate for your age in five distinct brain regions.
There’s also consideration of splitting apart SCT and ADHD. And of course, there’s common comorbidities.
And personally I believe, ADHD genes are just executing a high-variance strategy. [as being mildly brain-damaged leads to interesting neurological adaptations and tradeoffs]
source:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2u8E5UqEHU&list=PLLZlFL4q6WTGKUsTMdHQ4l4Gu01lqEy8g&index=23
By your description, that sounds exactly like multiple causes coming together to produce a disorder where less than all of nearly all of those causes would not be a disorder, even if they causes some difficulties.
[epsitemic status: mainly paraphrasing what Dr. Barkley is saying in those videos (worth watching!), maybe look deeper into the research for the claims he makes for a better/more precise understanding of the science, but that’s above my paygrade/interests]
No, from my understanding, ADHD is a single trait, that specifically affects those five affected brain regions, predictably leading to specific deficits in executive function.
those are:
Right Frontal Lobe (Orbital Prefrontal Cortex)
Basal Ganglia (Mainly Striatum and Globus Pallidum)
Cerebellum (central vermis area, more on right side)
Anterior Cingulate
Cortex Corpus Callosum (Primary Anterior Splenium)
And ADHD is also shown to be hereditary.
So ADHD is best understood as an alternative neurological phenotype, given the prevalence, not an uncommon one.
[Barkley doesn’t put it like that, but that part is just semantics]
You can’t spot the difference in an individual, because there’s too much variance in how brains usually look like/different areas are sized, but this “five affected brain regions”-pattern becomes apparent, when they looked at scans of a lot of people having the ADHD diagnosis and people who don’t have it.
You can focus on the “disorder”-part of the word, but whether it gets in your way enough to be diagnosed and called a disorder, strongly depends on your coping skills, your environment and also your goals.
For example, if your life is about being an idle rich person, who surfs on the beach and lazes around all day, there’s no need to get you on Ritallin.
But put someone in a school setting or work place where they must pay attention, they’ll have difficulty meeting expectations in a very predictable manner.
And also there’s presumably a second disorder called SCT, which is posited as being a second “Execuitve Disorder”-disfunciton, where people are slow and very dreamy.
And that can appear with, but also independent of ADHD (and ADHD doesn’t have to include SCT).
But also also, people don’t like SCT, because try diagnosing someone’s kid with “Sluggish Cognitive Tempo”-disorder without calling them stupid.
[ADHD doesn’t have a correlation to IQ, SCT I’m not sure..… also those labels are somewhat controversial and not everyone will use the same methodology, cause psychiatry is a sprawl]
And having ADHD increases risk of having other mental disorders, but this can partly be blamed on failing so hard, because you have ADHD.
[a life of constant failure isn’t great for the psyche and all that, but maybe it’s the different neurology too]
EDIT:
Also apparently 1⁄3 of ADHD cases happen because of a neuro strep-infection causing an autoimmune reaction that destroys those parts, during pregnancy. If that’s the case, there’s a high likelihood of seizures, too. Those acquired cases seem to also be lumped together. Won’t claim I fully understand, if/why that makes sense.
Okay, yes, as explained then that does seem to point in the direction of a single causal mechanism rather than a collection of symptoms that across some threshold add up to ADHD.
wonderful resource! thanks for the link, it gives me some additional rabbit holes to investigate.