Company Claims EEG Scans Can Help Identify ADHD

Al writes "Technology Review has an article about a company hoping to expand the clinical use of electroencephalography. Thanks to better sensor technologies, data-processing techniques, and more detailed knowledge of the brain, EEG is expanding into completely new areas. A startup called ElMindA, is developing an EEG system to help doctors diagnose attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Scientists have also used ElMindA's system to characterize brain-activity patterns in patients with ADHD, identifying statistical parameters that differ between normal people and those with ADHD." If "normal people" can sit through high-school classes without being distracted and grumpy, count me out.

Comments

get rid of shitty teachers

[pak9rabid]

As someone who's been 'diagnosed' with ADHD, I can confidently say that the solution to this 'problem' isn't putting kids on amphetamines, it's to fire the horrible teachers that make learning a horrible, horrible chore.

Re:get rid of shitty teachers

[Spazztastic]

As someone who's been 'diagnosed' with ADHD, I can confidently say that the solution to this 'problem' isn't putting kids on amphetamines, it's to fire the horrible teachers that make learning a horrible, horrible chore.

I agree. I was 'diagnosed' with it as well. As long as I had a very interesting teacher I was attentive. Interesting can be replaced with "attractive and female," as well.

Re:get rid of shitty teachers

[Ethanol-fueled]

it's to fire the horrible teachers that make learning a horrible, horrible chore.

No, fire the higher-ups who insist that schools must cater to the lowest common denominator and teach to the standardized test.

...And bring back the paddle.

Re:get rid of shitty teachers

[Akido37]

Is it the teachers that are shitty, or is it an educational system that demands teachers teach a certain way?

Anecdotally, a community college professor in my area (who holds a PhD) was fired because his classes were "too interactive", and he allowed students to "ask too many questions". To me, it sounds like he was doing his job: Helping the students learn.

In his case, the college wanted professors to stick to the lesson plan that had been handed down from the administration.

Re:get rid of shitty teachers

[jellomizer]

It is a million times easier to give kids drugs with harmful side effects then face the teachers union. I am pretty sure the Teachers Union owns the rights to "Won't someone please think of the children!"

Re:get rid of shitty teachers

[77Punker]

ADD isn't necessarily about school; it's about having the ability to pay attention and structure thoughts into actions. I was diagnosed with ADD at a young age and thought it was bullshit until I got to college because I was smart enough that I didn't need to pay attention to get good grades. When the ideas I needed to pick up were complex enough that I couldn't infer them on my own (data structures, anyone?), I noticed that I would listen intently to my professor in a class I enjoyed and come out with no idea what we just talked about.

Now in the "adult" world (it disappoints me that many adult are overgrown children), I know ADD is real because I'm certainly smart enough to write code that implements business rules, but I often lose track of important conversations. I constantly end up asking not for clarification of a topic, but just to hear things restated verbatim because the words went in one ear and out the other.

Your psychiatrist may be an irresponsible dirtbag that just throws stimulants at everything that comes through his door; incompetence is rampant in every profession. This does not mean that the body of established evidence for the existence and treatment of ADD is wrong.

Re:get rid of shitty teachers

[Anonymous Coward]

One problem is the "no child left behind" philosophy, which can also equate to "no child too far ahead"

-- gid

Re:get rid of shitty teachers

[drinkypoo]

Bring back the paddle? I don't think abuse is the answer. Besides, the school can't play disciplinarian if there's no discipline at home. It just won't work. Just kick the kids out if they're not manageable. Let people home school. The results will be depressing in many cases, but at least they won't drag down those in the education system for education. (Sure, it's also indoctrination, but it's still more useful than no education.)

Parental involvement is overwhelmingly what is missing in education today. No Child Left Behind should have resulted in riots in the streets, or at least at PTA meetings.

Re:get rid of shitty teachers

[SolarStorm]

As a former teacher, I can agree that there are some poor teachers, but there are also poor mechanics, ditch diggers, and doctors. Remember 50% of the doctors (or teachers) are below average. That being said, 50% of the PARENTS are below average. My point is that a teacher only has a child for a max of 6 hrs per day or 30 hrs per week. In today's world there are so many couples that spend the "required" 6 weeks at home to qualify them as a parent and then get daycare, grandma, etc to raise their child. Then are disappointed when the child has no direction. ADD becomes a quick solution. By labeling ADD parents are relieved of their responsibility because now their child has a disease. Some actually do! Many don't. So before we hang the education system I ask: Are you willing to spend more on education to attract better quality teachers? And, are you willing to take more responsibility for your own childs actions and development?

Re:get rid of shitty teachers

[dkleinsc]

I used to work extensively with kids, mostly in summer programs. I described the effects of ADHD as follows:

A kid with ADHD will tend to run around like crazy screaming their head off, will have a short attention span, and may not notice when you tell them something. A kid without ADHD, by contrast, will tend to run around like crazy screaming their head off, will have a short attention span, and may not notice when you tell them something.

Re:get rid of shitty teachers

[everett]

I was going to write a well thought out post about how I was also diagnosed with ADHD, but then I went outside to ride bikes instead.

Re:get rid of shitty teachers

[0100010001010011]

My own anecdotes.

I do think that it's getting over diagnosed these days, but I was diagnosed with it "back in the day". I thank my parents when I can for not putting me on anything.

Even when I'm running the meetings I will find I will stare directly at the person talking and have no clue what they were talking about because in the last 30 seconds my mind has been on 50 different subjects, mostly about other work I'm doing.

ADHD is akin to having a little buzzer in your head that tells you you have to switch tasks or at least what you're thinking about. Some (good) days the timer is set to a nice 5 minutes. Meaning I can get in a solid 5 minutes of programming. Worst case days it's set at 30 seconds. Meaning every 30 seconds I have to switch what I'm either thinking about or doing. If I'm in the middle of a line of code. I have to check my e-mail. Go to the bathroom. Look around the room. Wonder why the light in that socket is out. Read the posters in my cube. Look at other peoples posters. EVERY 30 SECONDS. Having concurrent 'things' going helps. (Watching movies, etc) because I can listen to the movie and still keep working on what I'm working on.

I agree, it's hard for even 'normal' people to concentrate on boring stuff. The difference is that there are times that there are things I enjoy and should be concentrating on. Worst case scenario is sex. (And this should trigger some +5 Funny's at my expense) But there are some times where my mind is jumping to what is that noise downstairs, did I switch over the laundry, what am I having for dinner, etc. And trust me, it's not fun.

I'm looking at going back to grad school, and I honestly don't think I'd be able to do it. I'm going to talk to my primary care physician and see if I can test out some of the ADHD drugs. If they improve my concentration at work. I just don't want something that takes a while to 'build up'. I more or less want to be able to say "this is a concentration day" pop a pill in the morning and concentrate at work, and on the weekends be able to do my own thing.

(Since starting this post. I've responded to 2 business & 4 personal e-mails. Checked when the best time to plant garlic is (came up this weekend). Updated the mysql pages for a website I run. Opened 3 other php files. Opened the Facebook API page. And launched 2 instances of Matlab. I have 3 rows in my Windows task bar full.)

Re:get rid of shitty teachers

[mooingyak]

That doesn't sound like ADD, it's just the results of stress. My wife was diagnosed with stress and those are the *exact* symptoms.. she'd be in the middle of a conversation and forget how it started. She really hated the effect when raiding... she couldn't hold enough information to be able to remember tactics.

The major difference being the the ADD/ADHD folks can focus fantastically well on something that interests them (like raiding for example).

Re:get rid of shitty teachers

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the biggest problem is thanks to teacher's unions, schools can't kick out the bad teachers, teaching isn't a competitive profession. You get a school you work at, you get the children "zoned" for your school.. I bet if schools had to compete for their money, they'd be a whole lot better.

I'm home schooling my boys for this exact reason. I'm sure they would be "diagnosed ADHD", but I would have been also. So my wife can do a much better job at teaching them what they need to know. Also the fact that she KNOWS their strengths and weaknesses. Like how my 5 yr old doesn't need any help learning to read maps, he learns just fine himself, also WoW and Guild Wars have helped him in that area. But being able to relate to the child is key. Like "Road Trip" guy said, (i'm guessing but you get the idea) "I can teach physics to a monkey, I just have to know how to relate it to him"... Each child relates things differently, that's why teaching a class of 40 kids doesn't always come out best in the end.

Re:get rid of shitty teachers

[dkleinsc]

Those kids were not simply running around and not paying attention, they were incapable of doing so. With a non-ADHD kid you could entice them with treats, or threaten them with punishment and they would behave (at least for awhile). But the ADHD children simply could not do it.

I had a fairly sure-fire way of getting ADHD kids to behave: get them focused on something that was interesting to them. And yes, that something may not have been what you originally had planned for them to be doing.

Re:get rid of shitty teachers

[blincoln]

The major difference being the the ADD/ADHD folks can focus fantastically well on something that interests them (like raiding for example).

In my experience, untreated ADD/ADHD means that while you can *sometimes* do that, it's not something you really have control over. IE it's not just interest (or lack thereof) in something, there is some other quality that determines whether you can do the hyper-focus thing on it.

I was diagnosed as having ADD as an adult, and I take prescription stimulants to correct for it. I've been overwhelmingly happy with the results - it's no longer a matter of rolling the dice to see if I can keep something (e.g. math, electronics) in my head long enough to get a handle on it. The problem I have now is finding time to study and make use of all the interests I have.

I have a lot of mixed feelings about whether I should have started taking them at an earlier age. On the one hand, I tend to agree with the people who think giving young people ADD medication tends to turn them into robots when they might have been more creative otherwise. On the other, looking back I notice that I ended up using a *lot* of caffeine anyway (enough to have more of a health effect than the prescription I take now).

If I'd had access to something more effective at the time, I might have gone in a very different direction, career-wise. Whether that's a good, bad, or neutral thing is more subjective, but there is definitely a window in the late teens/early 20s in which someone with ADD is going to limit or eliminate potential career options by their choice of medication or not.

Re:get rid of shitty teachers

[AK Marc]

...And bring back the paddle.

I spent split time in public and private schools. I was paddled one and only one time in school, and it was one of the reasons I went back into private schools for a time. I was in the second grade and was given the assignment to draw a man with two orange heads. This was on a day of a parent teacher conference near Halloween and the teacher wanted some art for the walls to make it seem like she did something other than have us work on stupid worksheets all day long, day after day. Well, everyone else in the class drew a man, normal in every way, other than in place of a head, he had two heads, and they were orange jack-o-lanterns. I, however, drew a normal man. He held, in each hand, an orange head. So, for drawing a man with two orange heads, I was ordered to the principals office for a paddling. I failed to follow directions.

When teachers send kids to get beaten because their directions are followed exactly, but they don't like the result, the system failed. To allow administrators to beat children for such stupid reasons should be illegal. There is nothing that justifies such actions. Oh, and they didn't notify my parents before or after. So yes, please bring back discipline. However, the paddle is not correlated with discipline, not even weakly. It's just abuse, and is abused.

Re:get rid of shitty teachers

[Jurily]

All the teacher has to do is leave the room and call the police to come and deal with the child.

Tell me, what is this magical power the police has that solves everything? And what will happen once they leave? And do you think they'll come back three times or more? They can't take the kid because the laws were not updated properly and there is no penalty for children under 14, even for murder. Of course back then there was nobody to apply them to.

Is the appropriate answer to allow backhanding? Nope. If anyone should be backhanded, it is the parents. It's not the kid's fault they act that way

Of course it is. He knows the teacher is powerless. Stop treating children like plants. I agree about the parents though.

If someone hit my kid (not that I have one, being mature enough to spare society my offspring) I would go and knock all their fucking teeth out.

What if the policeman hits him? Is he allowed with his magical powers? What if that slap was the only thing needed to make sure your kid will not be a criminal in 10 years?

Hitting my kid is my job.

Yes it is. But if you don't do it, don't be surprised if someone else will.

Overdiagnosis...

[Akido37]

If enough people are diagnosed with ADHD, when does it become "normal"?

Haven't...

[Darkness404]

Haven't people realized by now that ADHD is nothing more than a symptom of our education system and not a syndrome in and of itself?

Re:Haven't...

[yali]

Haven't people realized by now that the fact that some people are misdiagnosed with ADHD doesn't mean that the condition isn't real?

The problem is that there is a gap between the fairly extensive diagnostic procedures that should be used and what sometimes happens in practice (5-minute office visit where general practitioner hands out prescriptions on the school's or parent's sayso). I don't blame people for being skeptical, but that doesn't mean there aren't real kids (or adults) with a real disorder.

better diagnosis reduced the number of cases

[seroph]

There have been countless studies that indicate that ADHD is a neurological disorder the problem is when no physical tests are used in diagnosis people can more easily get labeled as having it when it is in fact a product of the education system.

On another note some cases of ADHD do not go away after adolescence and can impact work performance and social interactions. Also, the more popular illness for students currently is autism since it is not as easily identifiable as actual ADHD.

Re:And the simpler solution is . . .

[Darkness404]

...And the parents will say that they are clearly ADHD! Because they don't like eating vegetables, they would rather play outside then sit through church, they would rather play video games than read and they don't particularly like school. CLEARLY the answer is that its ADHD and not just the fact that most kids observe most of the ADHD symptoms. And of course the answer is never to improve the education system or just let kids behave as kids but its obviously to drug them up!

disorder?

[Lord Ender]

Humans did not evolve to sit at a desk, day after day, for most of their lives. Children being active and energetic is natural and healthy; it is not a disorder.

we should welcome this objectivity!

[panthroman]

Many people here are (correctly) deriding ADHD as being an ill-defined "disorder" vaguely attributed to recalcitrant students. That seems to be exactly the issue the EEG scans are trying to address.

From TFA: "...hopes will help doctors diagnose attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) more objectively..."

To use a polemical and simple example, imagine a time before trisomy 21 (aka Down's Syndrome) was understood. Then instead of understanding a cause (trisomy 21), we had to rely on symptoms (mental retardation). You can't take a symptom and pretend it's a cause. Mental retardation is ill-defined and has many potential causes, and lumping all "mentally retarded" people together is disingenuous. If mental retardation were treated like ADHD is today, then anyone who did poorly in school would be labeled mentally retarded and given a prescription, some pills, a stigma, and a glass ceiling.

We should welcome even small steps towards objectivity and causation for ill-defined diagnoses like ADHD.

jesus

[Anonymous Coward]

do i really have to read bullshit comments like "Darkness404" here on slashdot?

by reading here i always got the feeling ppl are more openminded.

im a 27 year old adult and finally got last year ADHD diagnosed. my life was hell before that, altho able of many many things failing at all of them. falling behind everyones and mine expectations. fail fail fail fail.

do you people really believe ADHD only happens in schools/class ? it affects our social life, work , etc, basically everything.
So i got this super high IQ, but because of my ADHD (till now) i never had any work better than a bullshit clerk job, forced to be surrounded by stupidity every day and even failing at those retarded jobs. thats a very nice feeling, and doesnt hurt at all, really. when i hear parents talk that they try to "heal" their kids without ritalin (or whatever) i would love to take them their kids away, they have no fucking clue what they are ruining.

so fuck you people who think ADHD is just a symptom of the education system or just a hype, or whatever. really. educate yourself, try to talk to people who suffer.

you cant imagine how much more i am accomplising now that im on ritalin.

(posting as coward because of no account)

Now we have another HD format?

[AnalPerfume]

WTF? I thought BluRay won, and was welcomed with a luke warm "meh" from consumers. Is this the new HD format to replace it?

Re:I dont get it?

[idontgno]

Well, here's the real problem. You don't know what point anything has in the real world. Never. Particularly, not at the age of 17. But even at the age of 47, or 77. Because the real world changes, and the most interesting changes take directions you can't even fantasize about, let alone accurately predict.

So, to write off any knowledge as irrelevant is short-sighted and foolish. When you ultimately need to know it, you may not have time to learn it.

Learn everything. There's no good excuse not to.

Re:When I was a kid

[sexconker]

It's all part of the pussification and nanny-statification of America. Leveling the playing field only stifles the desires of those who are better and sets up the weaker individuals for huge disappointment later on in life (or it would if the rest of us didn't have to keep propping them up).

Lame? Crippled? Handicapped? Handicapable? Disabled?
DIFFERENTLY ABLED.

Stupid? Moron? Idiot? Simpleton? Retard? Slow? Dunce? Challenged? Developmentally Disabled?
SPECIAL NEEDS.

Problem child? Acting up? Bad parenting? Acting Out? Attention Seeking Behavior?
ADD/ADHD.

Bastard? Child of a broken home? Single mother?
SINGLE MOTHER BY CHOICE.

F? Red ink? Sad face?
EVERYONE GETS A GOLD STAR FOR TRYING.

Math? Science? Girls not testing as well as boys?
TALK IN GROUPS ABOUT HOW MATH MAKES YOU FEEL.

Reading? Spelling? Grammar? Kids don't speak English?
LANGUAGE IS ALWAYS EVOLVING, WHY TEACH IT?

Hard? Difficult? Unfair?
CULTURE AND GENDER BIAS IN TESTING.

Re:There is no such thing as ADHD.

[Phasma Felis]

Seriously. Kids are all different. People are all different. ADHD roughly translates to "Teacher doesn't understand this kid and can't get through to him/her so we're going to use this made-up diagnosis to put him/her in a box and then pump him/her full of drugs to make the problem appear to have gone away." Administering neurotoxins to healthy children is child abuse and should be treated as such. The funny thing is, so many people say "oh yes, you're right, 99% of ADHD diagnoses are really just misunderstood children" but then their "ADHD" child always seems to be part of that last 1 percent. Nope, sorry, doesn't work that way, no exceptions. If you label a child "ADHD" you are an incompetent parent or teacher. Period.

You have no idea what you're talking about. You also don't know what "neurotoxin" means.

Please research the issue and report back to the class.

talked much with *adults* w/ AD(H)D? Thought not.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm an adult with AD(no H)D.

It would've been great if I'd been eating sugar or food coloring (had a healthy diet), or not exercising (always did), or watching too much TV (didn't as a kid, didn't have time to as an adult because I was always behind). It would've been great if my teachers were boring, or if my college classes were terrible, or my first jobs out of college were drone-work.

But they weren't, because ADHD is real. ADHD is what's left after all the denial and blame of external factors (which 99% of your peers can handle just fine, funny that) are removed. ADHD isn't some side-effect of soul-sucking corporate life: it's what might get you fired from the most energizing and exciting job you've found because you can't concentrate no matter how hard you try.

That's the problem with ADD: you can't concentrate on things you love, even when you're doing everything right. I'd be eating good foods (straight from the farmer's market) and exercising and taking tai chi and have half the concentration of people who lived off of ramen and jelly beans.

If you're an adult who might have ADD (or parents of a child with it), I encourage you to talk with adults who have ADD and are dealing with it effectively. Yes, I dislike having to take ritalin, but uncontrolled ADD was far, far worse.

The anti-meds (often scientology) crowd talks about kids being zombies on ritalin. You know what makes a person a zombie? Not having a life because it takes you 3-4 hours to do what fellow students can do in an hour. Putting in 12 hour days to get 8 hours worth of work done. Not being able to sleep for fear of when the axe is going to fall because you're permanently behind on everything.

Once I started on ritalin, I found what it was like to get a day's work done in a day, to have time to jump on new projects because I could accurately predict I had the time to work on them, to be able to contribute to meetings--to brainstorm not brainfog--rather than feel permanently 10 minutes behind.

Once I started on ritalin, I actually knew what it felt like to concentrate-- to look at a project and quickly set up planning to get it done efficiently (rather than start off the afternoon looking for a stamp and end the afternoon repainting the table, sans stamp, because everything was distracting and every project has "Priority 1"). Heck, if I forget my ritalin I can get by--not my best but much better than my pre-ritalin days--because I know what concentration and focus is.

Some ADD kids can get by in high-school or even community college without medications because their anti-meds parents follow them around to keep discipline, or because they're really smart and high-school never asks that much of you. But what happens when you're at college and everyone else is just as smart, and doesn't have (untreated) ADD? What happens when you've got a dream-job and your parents can't be whispering encouragement every half hour?

At some point everything external is what it should be, and you're still not able to focus. And it'll be time to deal with the reality of ADD. It's a brain thing, and modern medicine can help. Talk to your doctor, but before that talk to people who've been through this.

Re:I can't belive I have to step in here to say th

[Jurily]

Not only can you detect ADHD with EEG, but you can treat it.

Fun fact: Hungary does not recognize the thing you're trying to treat. It simply does not exist here. Although we do have something similar, we call that boredom, and it's not a disease.

And most of the parents would personally beat the shit out of you for even suggesting drugging their children.

I think it's the kind of people who have the authority about these decisions that are different, not the children.

Re:There is no such thing as ADHD.

[atraintocry]

I'm an adult. I have ADD. For years and years I denied it because I thought people like you knew what the fuck they were talking about. I'm almost 30 now and I have nothing to show for it, because instead of treating something I just berated myself for being "lazy."

I'm sick of you armchair quarterbacks. Stick to what you know, don't pontificate about what you don't.