* Teen-agers and adults believed to have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) automatically have two strikes against them:
* The perception among some health care providers is that ADHD is a childhood disease and tends to go away as children enter adolescence.
* Those health care providers who do believe ADHD can affect teens and adults are stuck using diagnostic and treatment methods that may work for children but not older people.
At Michigan State University, a multidisciplinary group of researchers is using a $1.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to figure out how ADHD works in the adolescent and adult brain.
"There's not an objective laboratory test for the diagnosis," said Joel T. Nigg, an assistant professor of psychology who is heading the project. "You can't just give a brain scan and see it."
"In addition, the field has no developmentally appropriate criteria for adult diagnosis," Nigg said. "Instead, clinicians must use childhood criteria and try to apply it to adults."
In an effort to get a better handle on how ADHD can affect the adult brain, Nigg and colleagues are using cutting-edge measures of language and visual processing designed to tap into the regions of the brain thought to be involved in attention problems.
For example, the researchers use a piece of equipment that can carefully track eye movement.
"This can tell where you're looking and how fast you can move your eye," Nigg said. "This can provide clues as to how quickly the brain is perceiving and processing information."
Nigg said one of the reasons the NIH opted to fund this study is because it is using the latest technology designed to delve into cognitive processes that may be related to the regions of the brain that could be affected by ADHD.
"We're using approaches of how to measure these functions that have never been applied to ADHD populations before," he said. "Hopefully, some of these measures we're developing will be assessment tools 25 years from now."
Some of the symptoms of adult ADHD, Nigg said, are a constant feeling of restlessness, an inability to pay attention despite efforts to do so, feelings of frustration over never being able to accomplish goals, impulsive behavior and a lack of organization.
This project is seeking patients to take part in the investigation. To be eligible, participants must be between the ages of 14 and 35, not suffer from depression and not abuse drugs.
The project is seeking more than 500 people -- half of whom who are believed to have ADHD and the other half who do not. Participants will be compensated for their time.
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