Huberman Lab ADHD Flashcards
What are the symptoms of people with ADHD?
Poor attention and high levels of impulsivity. People with ADHD are destructible, easily annoyed by some things that happen in the room, but can hyper-focus on things that they enjoy and are intrigued by. Many people with ADHD if you give them something they really love, they will obtain laser focus without any effort. Challenges with time perception: often run late, often procrastinate. If they are given a deadline, they can focus if the perceived deadline is scary enough. Spacial organizational skills: the pile system, piling system to organize things according to a system that only makes sense to them. Trouble with working memory. Hard time with anything that is mundane and not interesting to them.
What is attention?
Seeing and perceiving the sensory world. Right now I am paying attention to only certain sensory inputs.
What is impulse control?
Requires pushing out, it means lack of perception.
What is working memory?
Is the ability to keep specific information online, recycle it in the brain over and over so that you can use it in the immediate or short term. People with ADHD lose the ability to remember information that they need to keep in mind anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes.
Why people with ADHD can hyper-focus on things they enjoy and are curious about?
From the neuro-biological perspective it is explained by dopamine. Dopamine is released from neurons, it changes the circuit activity in the brain, such as that certain circuits are more active than others. Tends to put us in a state of motivation and wanting things outside the confines of our skin. Dopamine tends to contract our visual world and it tends to makes us pay attention to things that are outside and beyond of confines of our skin. Dopamine tends to narrow our visual focus and our auditory focus, it creates a cone of auditory attention.
What neurocircuits are directly affected by dopamine?
Default-mode network: networks of brain areas that is active when we are not doing anything, when not engaged in any particular task.
Task-related network: networks of the brain that make you goal oriented.
How default-mode and task-oriented networks normally interact?
The default-mode network includes the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the posterior cingulate cortex, lateral parietal lobe are normally synchronized in activity. The task-mode involves a different part of the prefrontal cortex. In a person without ADHD these two network modes work in anti- correlation. In a person with ADHD these networks are actually more coordinated, and that is what´s abnormal. When a lot of musical instruments playing at the same time but don´t sound harmoniously. What dopamine does in this case is acts as the conductor: “you go now, you go now”
Could it be that dopamine is just not sufficient in enough levels, or could it be that dopamine is just doing it all wrong?
The low dopamine hypothesis: If dopamine levels are too low in particular circuits of the brain it leads to unnecessary firing of neurons in the brain that are unrelated to the task that one is trying to do and that is unrelated to the information that one is trying to focus on.
Attentional blinks
If you see something that you are looking for or very interested in, you are definitely missing other information, in part because you´re over-focusing on something. More recent hypothesis that people with ADHD tend to have more attentional blinks because they´re constantly hyper-focusing on something. Over-focusing on certain elements and thereby missing other elements they should be attending to.
What is open monitoring?
Use the panoramic view to access the open monitoring state. Meditation practices for 20 min a day reduces significantly the amount of attentional blinks.
How does the brain reward system work?
It involves the dopamine pathways in the brain. The pathway most often associated with rewards is the mesolimbic dopamine pathway, which starts in the ventral tegmental area of the brain (VTA). VTA is the primary area of dopamine production in the brain and the mesolimbic dopamine pathway connects it with the nucleus accumbens, an area of the brain that is strongly associated with motivation and reward. When we use a dopamine releasing substance or experience a reward, dopamine neurons in the VTA are activated. These neurons project to the nucleus accumbens via the mesolimbic dopamine pathway, which causes the dopamine levels in the nucleus accumbens to rise. Another major dopamine pathway, called mesocortical pathway, also originates in the VTA but travels to the cerebral cortex, specifically to the frontal cortex. It also activates during rewarding experiences.
What is one of the functions of the prefrontal cortex?
Is the area that says “No, not now” to other parts of the brain. It controls impulsivity.
Explain the dopamine wave-pool analogy…
Dopamine peaks and dopamine baseline (dopamine pool/reservoir), sometimes can go below baseline. Wave-pool analogy for how dopamine works in the mesocortical pathway. If the height and frequency of the waves is very very large some of that water can slosh out of the wavepool and the baseline drops. However if the waves are smaller waves or less frequent higher waves the dopamine levels remain constant.
How the desire for something/ triggers that start the dopamine circuit?
Dopamine is not just released as a reward from something we want. Dopamine is also released in anticipation of what we want. That release in dopamine relates also to our propensity/ desire to move. Desire and the need to move in order to pursue a goal is one and the same process. Very soon after my desire for something, after the initial peak in dopamine there is a drop below the initial baseline, and is this drop in dopamine that triggers me to move to find that coffee, that water, that food or goal.
What are the stimuli that trigger the dopamine circuits?
