Slashdot Mirror
ADHD Drugs Aren't Doing What You Think, Scientists Warn (inverse.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Inverse: The study authors Lisa Weyandt, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at the University of Rhode Island, and Tara White, Ph.D., an assistant professor of Behavioral and Social Sciences at Brown University, started out investigating the effects of ADHD medications in students that actually have a diagnosable attention deficit disorder. They showed that in these students, there is decreased activity in the areas of the brain controlling "executive functions," which can make it hard for them to stay organized or focused. But because both authors work with college students, they soon became more interested in the misuse of Adderall. In students whose brains aren't affected by ADHD, does Adderall act as a supercharger? Does it make those areas fly into overdrive and unlock otherwise untapped intellectual ability, as all pill-popping students hope?
Weyant and White's double-blind, placebo-controlled study on 13 college students was a small sample, they admit, but their experiment had a rigorous study design. Neither the students nor the researchers knew who was getting Adderall and who was getting placebo sugar pill. The six tests evaluated different aspects of cognition, like working memory, reading ability and reaction time. While students on Adderall did make fewer errors on a reaction time test, it actually worsened working memory, as shown by a decline in performance on a task where they had to repeat sequences of numbers. In short, Adderall improved focus and attention -- but it didn't actually make anyone smarter. The research has been published in the journal Pharmacy.
Weyant and White's double-blind, placebo-controlled study on 13 college students was a small sample, they admit, but their experiment had a rigorous study design. Neither the students nor the researchers knew who was getting Adderall and who was getting placebo sugar pill. The six tests evaluated different aspects of cognition, like working memory, reading ability and reaction time. While students on Adderall did make fewer errors on a reaction time test, it actually worsened working memory, as shown by a decline in performance on a task where they had to repeat sequences of numbers. In short, Adderall improved focus and attention -- but it didn't actually make anyone smarter. The research has been published in the journal Pharmacy.
" Adderall improved focus and attention -- but it didn't actually make anyone smarter." Presumably, you are reasonably smarter already, being accepted in college. So the real benefit is focus and attention, not "smarter".
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
I've had a lot of teachers whose specialty was in this area, and honestly this is kind of the equivalent of 'We checked, water is wet.' ADHD is basically a bandwidth problem--people with attention deficit disorders (there's several) lack the standard suite of preprocessing filters on their incoming data. These normally are present to basically try to get you to stick with what (the filters judge to be) the important stuff in the incoming data is--without these filters, you're attempting to drink from the proverbial firehose. Hyperactivity is the most common method by which the brain attempts to cope--"Maybe if we move really really really fast we can get all this sorted!"
There's other strategies, too, such as 'shut down' and 'increase processing power' which have their own relative issues and your attention is still going to be not working like what is classed as 'normal'--in some populations, ADD is normal, because assumptions about what is/isn't important in your environment tended to get selected against instead of heavily agricultural populations where we strongly selected for the ability to not be too bothered by spending many hours staring at the hind end of a draft animal... It's not shot; you can get hyperfocus and flow, where your attention is very tightly focused on doing a task, vastly more easily than the normal population.
There is, however, one thing about this that's surprising--and that's that you get the same kind of effects in normal people. One of the old methods for confirming an ADD diagnosis is that you had an atypical reaction to stimulants...which Adderall and Ritalin are. To be specific, they're amphetamines...
FYI: Working memory is basically the RAM of the brain--it's short-term holding for stuff you're processing and using, which is why it's called working memory. One of the things you check for if somebody who should be doing well in school but isn't? Is if their working memory is functioning correctly.
Focus and attention aren't anywhere near as important. You can only be vaguely paying attention and still retain a surprising amount of information, but you need your working memory to remember the start of a paragraph when you reach its end, and other things rather important to the ability to reason and make good choices.
So it's not just that it didn't make anybody 'smarter,' it actually managed to hose something you direly need working to be smart. Though, if amphetamines in general screw with the working memory, that explains so much about the life choices of amphetamine addicts...
You mean the drug prescribed for Attention Deficit Disorder treated attention deficit, but wasn't helpful in treating cognitive deficit? And that's why it doesn't do what people think it does? Umm... what?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I'm glad we have scientists that brand speed and then sell it to people for profit, legally.
Wish they did it with cocaine and weed too, I'm sure we can find an excuse WHY it's a good idea. Just invent another imaginary illness, or "condition".
Correct. A sample size of 13 is utterly worthless statistically. No useful information can be had from such an experiment.
Incorrect. A sample size of 13 does give statistically significant results (for a fairly specific version of significant), and is, in fact, the smallest sample size to do so.
It might never have occurred to you to wonder why legal trials have a judge and 12 people on a jury - making 13 people. Perhaps you should look into that: mathematically it's quite interesting.
I don't care how perfectly well you've set up your experiment. 13 people does not a respectable sample size make. It's all too likely that a fluke is majorly skewing the results. I don't even understand what this post is doing here. We should know better.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it well worth the effort.
They're supposed to make you pay attention to what you're told, not to reflect upon it.
Working as designed.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yep. A Google search revealed the historical reason that I had presumed from the beginning: it's because of the 12 tribes of Israel: https://www.insidescience.org/news/mathematics-jury-size
More directly, it was connected to Jesus' twelve apostles, but the reason there were 12 apostles was because it was symbolic of the 12 tribes.
Incipiamus, fratres, servire Domino Deo, quia hucusque vix vel parum in nullo profecimus.