ADHD and Stress in Children: Brain Scans

Share it now

Brain Scan Studies of ADHD and Stress in Children

As parents of ADHD kids know all too well, children with ADHD often have difficulty handling stress, or stressful situations. Now, a team of researchers in Australia may have found a biological reason why this is so.

ADHD Children Scanned


The researchers studied brain scans of 24 ADHD children (with hyperactivity) and found that the right parietal lobes in children with ADHD did not function as well as in children without ADHD. The right parietal lobes are associated with the development of coping strategies.

Prof Vance, who is based at Melbourne's Royal Children's Hospital, says these children will do anything to feel in control of their situation. They have negative, oppositional ways of relating, for instance, changing the rules of a game endlessly and arguing back. "This discovery has the real potential to improve treatment strategies for ADHD, to enable these children to better manage the demands of their family and school relationships," he said. "It cannot be assumed that ADHD behavior is the fault of bad parenting or lack or discipline."

Further studies into brain regions and key environmental factors are underway to add to this research, published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.


Get quality articles, ADHD news, parenting tips and advice, coupons and special offers by becoming a member of our weekly ADHD newsletter for parents. It's free! And please tell your friends about the ADHD Information Library at http://newideas.net!

Back to "ADHD Research" index


Share it now

Uncaught exception thrown in shutdown function.

PDOException: SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 11 database disk image is malformed: INSERT INTO {watchdog} (uid, type, message, variables, severity, link, location, referer, hostname, timestamp) VALUES (?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?); Array ( [0] => 0 [1] => php [2] => %type: !message in %function (line %line of %file). [3] => a:6:{s:5:"%type";s:19:"Deprecated function";s:8:"!message";s:83:"The each() function is deprecated. This message will be suppressed on further calls";s:9:"%function";s:27:"_drupal_shutdown_function()";s:5:"%file";s:47:"/home/devnew/public_html/includes/bootstrap.inc";s:5:"%line";i:3200;s:14:"severity_level";i:7;} [4] => 7 [5] => [6] => http://newideas.net/book/export/html/188 [7] => [8] => 44.200.101.170 [9] => 1711676293 ) in dblog_watchdog() (line 157 of /home/devnew/public_html/modules/dblog/dblog.module).