1) People with ADHD don’t process verbal warnings correctly, which might be why we wind up in the ER more often. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medicine/article/altered-cingulate-and-amygdala-response-towards-threat-and-safe-cues-in-attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder/807E6076D09DE1BA7C1B27EF3E918400#
This abstract was REALLY hard to understand, but I think this is what they did: They took a bunch of adults, some with ADHD and some without. The authors conditioned (taught) the subjects that one sound was dangerous by causing them mild pain when they heard it, repeatedly. They also warned them verbally that they might feel pain from a different sound. Then, they exposed the subjects to each sound. The non-ADHD adults displayed similar levels of fear with both sounds, but the ADHD adults showed much more fear of the sound that they were conditioned to fear.
This one, I think, is particularly useful for parents, trying to reduce the risk of injuries. Sure, you warned your kid that it was dangerous, but he didn’t really GET IT the way a non-ADHD kid would, which means they may need to be protected in certain ways longer.
2) Stimulant medication in childhood appears to change the structure of ADHD-affected brain regions, making them appear more like those of non-ADHD youth. https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/abs/10.1176/appi.ajp.2010.09091259?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori%3Arid%3Acrossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%3Dpubmed&
It’s not clear how strong or reliable these findings are, but the article suggests that, far from causing dependency, ADHD medications, over time, can actually help us overcome the developmental delay of ADHD. Also good for parents, but this one is for medication-hesitant parents, especially when non-drug treatments have been tried already.
The first one seems like it unintentionally might have hit on something to do with how we’re seemingly more prone to lasting effects from traumatic events, as described here. Will read when I’m properly awake, that’s fascinating!
screaming into the void since '89 