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The primary goal of this blog is to educate people about ADHD. Notwithstanding the DSM in its various iterations or the opinions of pointy-headed academic dweebs it is critical for people to understand that ADHD truly is not a disorder but a difference. So far seven genetic loci have been identified in the ADHD individual. Clearly ADHD is an adaptive mutation found in certain populations. It has at least an 80% heritability. Essentially it's the difference between a Mac and a PC. Really, I'm not kidding you. I shall expound on this below.
The ADHD brain is an iBrain. The non-ADHD brain is a PC brain. They have totally different processors, marked differences in RAM capacity and operation, different storage systems and different operating systems.
People with ADHD have a remarkably high incidence of mixed dominance and lefthandedness. Many of the latter really are mixed dominant as opposed to devoted left-handed people. This is an explanation for the coincidental finding that people with ADHD have a significant incidence of dyscalculia (problems with arithmetic/mathematics) and acquisition of foreign language other than by immersion. They do not have devoted areas for either of these in their brain. It would be interesting to see some functional MRI and PET scans done in such individuals to see how well language and math would be localized but I don't anticipate that happening soon.
What this means in English is that there is a lot more simultaneous bi-hemispheric function and communication in people with ADHD than people who do not have ADHD. This goes a long way to explain the affectiveness or emotionality of people with ADHD who frequently are labeled as having generalized anxiety disorders, bipolar disorders, mood disorders and impulse disorders. Also relevant is the fact that women have a much larger corpus callosum than men. That is the strip down the middle of the brain which connects the right and left hemispheres together. Women are known to be more emotional, more sensitive to emotion, and to have more affect in their communication and cognition. Might this be a reason that women have more inattentive ADHD than men who tend to be hyperactive and impulsive because the male brain is not anatomically structured to deal as effectively with this convergence.
Perceptual processes are very different. Typically people look at a point in space in front of them or focus on one sound or other aural input. Sensory distractions in those fields are problematic. They like to study in the silent carrel. People with ADHD view the world as a movie screen, 160° all the time, in Cinemascope and Panavision. They are said to have excellent peripheral vision when in fact they are seeing everything and processing the input simultaneously. Aurally they simultaneously attend to multiple conversations and sounds, intrude in other people's conversations, carry on several at the same time and are basically very irritating to others. They usually need controlled noise in order to dampen their heightened sensory vigilance in order to study or focus on many things. Hence their excellence in multitasking. They make excellent middle linebackers, catchers, Navy SEALs, physicians and many other things. They don't tend to do so well crunching numbers or following bureaucratic rules. They tend to be the annoying fellow in the back of the lecture hall listening to his iPod as he reads a detective story and when confronted by the professor is able to recite back to the professor the entire lecture.
RAM capacity is huge with an enormous number of items or programs open all of the time. It is this massive volume of open programs that the ADHD person has to check all the time and often makes them distractible, anxious or overloaded. Pharmacotherapy and Cognitive- Behavioral Therapy can help them deal with mainstream classrooms, committee meetings and red tape. They don't need any treatment and do extremely well in many sports, combat, and professions that require instantaneous analysis of multiple possibilities and variables.
The ADHD processor is an intuitive nonlinear processor. The PC processor is a linear concrete processor. That is why the ADHD student or person can often come to a rapid conclusion but be unable to explain the steps they followed to achieve that conclusion and be unable to comprehend and learn those steps if laid out by another.
People with ADHD are not so much afflicted as they are just somewhat different. Labeling it as a disorder as opposed to a difference has stigmatized generations of children and blocked effective, comprehensive education and treatment that would enable them to function better in places for which they are not naturally adapted.
My anecdotal observation is that people with ADHD are drawn to Macs. They'll sit down and just operate them intuitively without reading any instructions (people with ADHD never read the instructions to anything) and find attempts to work a PC cumbersome, redundant and confusing. Similarly people without ADHD seem to like PCs a lot. Yes, there are more software programs for PCs to deal with engineering, bridge building, accounting and many other left brain operations. I know that such programs could be written for Macs, but how many people with ADHD become engineers and accountants compared to being more creative and intuitive?
A fundamental source of conflict between folks with ADHD and folks without ADHD is that they perceive the world differently, process thoughts and emotions differently and respond differently. Usually they have a great deal of difficulty being PC.
