The New Science of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: News from the Cutting Edge of Research Science

Author(s): Elizabeth Gilley

The evolving science of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder garners insight from many sciences for enlarged perspective, expanding theoretical understanding, and broadening treatment applications. Comorbidity and ADHD’s shared characteristics with other disorders have made diagnosis difficult, especially when professional trends base diagnosis upon a cluster of symptoms. Neuroscience is now pinpointing energetic signatures of the disease’s electro-magnetic expression. In addition to traditional pharmacological and behavioral therapeutic treatments, neuro-therapy is being prescribed in the form of neurofeedback.

The amount of research on the global spectrum is extremely vast, far reaching, crossing over the limitations of former boundaries, and expanding exponentially. It is a daunting task for those in the practice of medicine to keep abreast of the latest research in the field of one’s own specialty, much less to be informed of the advancements in inter-related or cross over fields. Typically, research science is thirty to fifty years ahead to what is available to the public. For example, based upon the past fifty years of research, a new disease has come to the forefront of the research arena, Reward Deficiency Syndrome (RDS). Addiction is one of its behavioral expressions. This is huge. Addiction is no longer viewed as the disease. It is the symptom. ADHD is closely associated with RDS and is viewed as a precursor to addiction. On the post doctoral level of research science, for those in the know, there is no debate. However, unfortunately, many in the practice of medicine are uninformed, and still using last century’s ADHD and addiction conceptual criteria.

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