What
Is Attention Deficit?
There's often nothing more frustrating than
seeing a child or being an adolescent who
experiences learning problems. These individuals may
often be out of control, over-stimulated,
under-stimulated, or experience uncontrolled
stimulation patterns throughout their sensorium,
exhibiting behavioral patterns which are difficult
to explain and which often disrupt an entire
household.
Attention Deficit is a dysfunction
of the Central Nervous System (CNS), most
specifically the Reticular Activating System, which
results in difficulties of maintaining attention and
concentration, learning and memory, as well as
involving an inability to process and sort out
incoming information or stimulus from both an
individual's inner (subjective) and outer
(objective) worlds. It may manifest itself in undue
passivity or inattentiveness, or unruly,
uncontrollable, aggressive hyperactivity in affected
individuals.
What Are The Causes Of
Attention Deficit? Attention Deficit is a
limiting metabolic dysfunction of the Reticular
Activating System, the center of consciousness that
coordinates learning and memory, and which normally
supplies the appropriate neural connections
necessary for smooth information processing and
clear, non-stressful attention. When neural building
materials are lacking, demand for further
connectivity cannot easily be fulfilled, interfering
with the efficient processing of information, and
frustrating the AD individual.
In other words, neural "hardware"
remains in limited production (there's not enough of
it), and supply cannot keep up with the demand
(increasing stimulus or "traffic") for new neural
connections within the Central Nervous System (CNS).
Demands for new learning, memory, and the management
of information processing cannot be satisfied, and
the insufficient "connections" result in existing
neural pathways being repeatedly overworked and over
stressed, often resulting in complete gridlock or
shutdown so that nothing gets processed thereafter.
This, most noticeably, generates frustration,
bewilderment and behavioral problems in the
Attention Deficited individual.
The Reticular
Activating System and its connections. At the center
of consciousness, attention and learning.
The Reticular Activating System appears to be
intimately involved in the neural mechanisms which
produce consciousness and focused attention,
receiving impulses from the spinal cord and relaying
them to the Thalamus, and from there to the Cortex,
and back again in a feedback loop to the Hippocampus
/ Thalamus / Hypothalamus and participating neural
structures in order for learning and memory to take
place. Without continual excitation of cortical
neurons by reticular activation impulses, an
individual is unconscious and cannot be aroused.
When stimulation is enough for consciousness but not
for attentiveness, ADD or LD results. If too
activated, an individual cannot relax or concentrate
(and is over-stimulated or hyperactive) often
resulting in ADHD.
How Does This Limitation Affect
An Individual's Perceptual Abilities?
Although Attention Deficit starts in the brain,
it really involves the entire sensorium (vision,
smell, touch, hearing, etc.) as well as the inner
world of cognition and emotion. When deprived of the
required number of neural connections needed to
process the "traffic" smoothly, competition between
various stimulus results. Overly competitive
stimulation from multiple external and internal
sources (too much visual stimulation, too much sound
stimulation, too many internal feelings and
emotions, etc.) can cause undue frustration,
irritation, aggression and anxiety. When the limited
neural network is overly taxed in this regard, it
becomes unable to "tune in" or focus on some
stimulation, while "tuning out," or "turning down"
(attenuating) other stimulation.
This lack of ability to focus on
some particular stimulus while attenuating others,
creates undue "noise" in the perceptual systems
within the brain. For the Attention Deficited
individual, this perceptual "neural-noise" is so
overly noxious and continuous that it appears to be
competitively assaultive, crippling any attempt to
concentrate on one stimulus while attenuating
others. Feelings of helplessness and anxiety are
often overwhelming, forcing an Attention Deficited
individual to look for ways in which to survive the
assaultive nature of their world.
A number of strategies are
possible, but two are generally the most common and
most easily documented. The first is that of an ADHD
individual. ADHDs are hypothesized to have ample
supplies of Acetylcholine and clear, lipofuscin-free,
unobstructed Cholinergic pathways, allowing them to
actively compete and overwhelm the intrusive
messages. Thus, ADHD individuals attempt to operate
at a "noisier" level (becoming intensely
hyperactive), trying to "shout-down" the crowded
array of competing stimulation within their brain.
ADDs and LDs are hypothesized to
have low Acetylcholine levels and adverse lipofuscin
populations within the Cholinergic neural pathways,
making a competitive response more difficult and
trying. For both an ADD and LD individual, it
becomes so "noisy" that it becomes necessary to shut
down all processing of the senses altogether,
avoiding and deflecting all stimulation. The
incessant cacophony of "neural-noises" produces a
powerfully competitive "numbing," almost hypnotic
agent, and ADHD individuals simply "give up" to the
competitively powerful undifferentiated
"white-neural-noise" being generated by their
sensorium because the neural-thresholds of the
sensorium have over-fired and can no longer be
sustained. Thus, unlike other children, the ADD and
LD individual simply "shut-down" and "tune-out,"
producing high Theta and/or Alpha brain waves (see
brain maps below).
Relative Power Z-Score Maps from Quantitative
Electroencephalography (QEEG)
Differences in activity in normal and ADD children
The brain maps on the left
(1&2) are of normal individuals: a 14 year old
female and 9 year old male. The ones on the right
(3&4) are ADD individuals: a different 14 year old
female and a different 9 year old male. Notice how
the two ADD individuals (3&4) demonstrate high (more
red) Theta and Alpha activity in their maps than do
the normal individuals, respectively. High Theta
wave actvity is generally associated with
drowsiness; High Alpha activity is generally
associated with idleness. The ADD results (3&4) are
characteristic of states of non-attentiveness, and
too little stimulation of the reticular activating
system, and probable inadequate number of
connections. Thus the ADD/LD child can effectively
"tune-out" his/her environment. In contrast, the
normal children's results of low Alpha and Theta
wave activity (1&2) are characteristic of alertness
and focused attentiveness, demonstrating adequate
stimulation of the reticular activating system, and
thus, an adequate number of neural connections.
What Can Be Done To Correct
This Dysfunction Of The Reticular Activating System?
Fortunately, when appropriate (1) neural
building materials, (2) precursors to
neurotransmitters and (3) an appropriate fund of
neural buffers are supplied, neural networks may be
created and forged quickly in order to meet the
increasing demands of heavy neural traffic,
especially in the prepubescent individual. In fact,
given the chance, individual neurons can grow at the
rate of 3-5mm per day! And, there are roughly 100
billion neurons in the brain to be developed, along
with a staggering 900 billion supporting glial
("helper") cells -- a grand total of one trillion
(1,000,000,000,000) cells to be nurtured -- that's
10 times the number of stars estimated to be in our
galaxy!
Are These Neural Building
Materials Really All That Important?
Yes, they are! One half of the dry weight of the
brain (neurons, glial and brain cells) is made up of
fatty acids and lipids. The "hard neural
connections," or synapses, between all these
essential areas of the brain where the coordination
of memory and learning take place is largely made
possible by the structures of Fatty Acids and
Phospholipids alone. And, the physical number of
neural connections then potentiates further
production of neurotransmitters and neural buffers,
which in turn enhances memory processing and
learning even more. If these essential building
blocks of the brain's "hardware" and "software" are
not adequately provided for, then many "connections"
will simply not be made or developed. The good news
is that Växa's Attend supplies these important
factors!
Composite Structure of a
typical Neuron
Actual
Scanning Electron Micrograph of a Neuron
The basic "Hardware" of the Central Nervous
System must be in place in order for memory and
learning to proceed efficiently. The more neurons
there are that can make "connections" with other
neurons, the more efficient and easy learning and
remembering may become. Without such "connectivity,"
learning is often frustrated and impaired as it is
with Attention Deficited individuals. (Above is a
diagram of a Multipolar neuron with multiple
extentions from the cell body. Below is an actual
micrograph of a Bipolar neuron with 2 extensions
from the cell body.)
