Priscilla Xu

Misconceptions of ADHD

• ADHD is related to nothing to do with intelligence.
• ADHD folks have a “deficient in attention.”
  • ADHD folks actually have too much attention.
  • Their working memory is functioning well.

What are the characteristics of ADHD?

• Impulse, concentration, and focus
• They cannot hold their attention.
• The impulse control system works differently in their brains.
• High levels of impulsively
• ADHD can focus a lot on something they really really like.
  • Most life involves things we don’t want to do (such as administrative tasks and homework).
• Deadlines make ADHD people focus and work under stress. So, usually, they underestimate time.
  • Hard to organization and sense of time.
• They hate boring things or routines/habits.
• Always try to escape boredom.

What is attention?

• Attention is perceiving the senses.
  • There are two modes of attention in the brain: default mode and task mode.
  • That is why Focusing and Inhibiting distraction pathways are different.
  • The pathways are different because inhibiting distractions means surpassing your attention and pulling the blinds to things you are not supposed to pay attention to.
• Default mode
  • The dorsolateral Prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, and lateral parietal cortex synchronize to control the default mode network.
  • If someone did not sleep well. Default mode networks do not synchronize
• Task networks. Goal-oriented.
  • The medial prefrontal cortex involves in task networks.
  • You are restricting your behaviors with the task-oriented network.
• Dopamine is a conductor of the default mode and the task mode.
  • The task and default mode networks work together in a seesaw fashion.

How is ADHD’s attention function differently at a physiological level?

• ADHD folks have too much dopamine in their system, so they will have task and default modes playing out of synchrony.
  • Tell yourself that this is the most exciting thing, or the effort is rewarding works to get the non-ADHD kid to focus.
  • Kids with ADHD can’t tell themselves that.

The Role of Dopamine in Flow

• Getting into flow is about finding a task you are good at. If you make errors in learning something, you are not in the flow.
• Dopamine is for focus and increases curiosity and attention.
  • Dopamine narrows the visual focus and audio cone perception.
  • It is one of the major players in the neuro-cocktail of flow.
• When you grow older, you have more attention to control your behaviors.
• Perception of time is changed when going to sleep soon
  • Perception of time is associated with actual eye blinks.
  • After blinks, the perception of time is reset.
  • The rate of blinking is controlled as attention.
  • Your eyes are what you can control for the perception of time.
  • Slow-motion mode with dopamine means you are more focused mode.
    • This is the reason why flow feels like time freezes. (Less blinking, more focus, and perception slower the time).

Attentional Blinks and Time Perception.

• Attention blinks are when you doze off a little bit and come back into your mind.
  • Imagine searching for a target and then finding it, so you pause and celebrate mildly. Then, the attention shuts off and comes back.
  • Each time you blink your eyes, your brain resets your time perception.
• When you close your eyes for 15 minutes, your brain enters a state called open-monitoring meditation.
  • Closing your eyes decrease your attention blinks and increase your focus.
• The experiment of attention blinks
  • A string of letters + numbers and look out r and z. Then, people will look at the r and miss the z because of an attentional blink after recognizing the r and then missing the Z
  • Many attention blinks are related to over-focusing, leading to missing details and errors.