- Warmer Climate, More Pollen, Worse Allergies: How to Fight Back
- Strike Out Kids’ Overuse Injuries This Baseball Season
- Energy Drink Habit Led to Heart Failure in a Young Man
- 4 in 10 Transgender Women Have HIV: CDC
- Americans Still Avoiding ERs in Pandemic, But Uptick Seen in Mental Health Crises
- AHA News: While Mopping, Young Mom’s Heart Tore
- AHA News: Could the Pandemic Help Boost Diversity in Clinical Trials?
- Booster Shots a Likely Reality for COVID-Vaccinated Americans
- Health Highlights, April 16, 2021
- Did CBD Oil for Seizures Push a 2-Year-Old Boy Into Puberty?
ADHD Brain May Be a Little Different
THURSDAY, Feb. 11A link appears to exist between attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and anomalies in the brain’s reward system, a new study suggests.
Spanish researchers used MRI to scan the brains of 42 children with ADHD and 42 other children with no signs of ADHD and found that the ventral striatum was smaller, particularly on the right side, in those with ADHD. The ventral striatum includes the nucleus accumbens, which maintains levels of motivation when a person starts a task and continues to maintain motivation until the task is completed.
The reduced size of the ventral striatum in children with ADHD was associated with symptoms of hyperactivity and impulsiveness, the researchers said.
The study was published recently in the journal Biological Psychiatry.
These findings support results from previous studies in animals in which researchers identified an association between the nucleus accumbens, impulsive behavior and hyperactivity.
The researchers said it appears that ADHD is not only caused by brain alterations that affect cognitive processes, but also by brain irregularities that cause problems with motivation.
More information
The U.S. National Institute of Mental Health has more about ADHD.
Source: HealthDay
