28
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: found
      Is Open Access

      The Four Causes of ADHD: Aristotle in the Classroom

      research-article

      Read this article at

      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is one of the most well-established and at the same time controversial disorders to the extreme of being placed in doubt. In the first of two parts, the established position is critically reviewed, beginning with showing fallacious reasoning on which the diagnosis is based, lacking clinical proof. Similarly, a certain rhetoric and metaphysics in genetic and neurobiological research is highlighted, where, for example, a meager accumulation of data is offered as robust conclusions, and correlates and correlations as causes and bases. However, that may be, the controversy is silenced in a dialog of the deaf between “defenders” and “critics.” with no way out in sight in empirical and scientific terms. A new meta-scientific position is necessary to analyze the science of ADHD itself and its social uses. In this respect, the second part introduces Aristotle’s four causes, material, formal, efficient, final, as an instrument of enquiry. According to this analysis, ADHD is not the pretended clinical entity as presented, but a practical entity providing a variety of functions. The implications would be rather different from the usual.

          Related collections

          Most cited references72

          • Record: found
          • Abstract: found
          • Article: not found

          Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

          Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a childhood-onset neurodevelopmental disorder with a prevalence of 1·4-3·0%. It is more common in boys than girls. Comorbidity with childhood-onset neurodevelopmental disorders and psychiatric disorders is substantial. ADHD is highly heritable and multifactorial; multiple genes and non-inherited factors contribute to the disorder. Prenatal and perinatal factors have been implicated as risks, but definite causes remain unknown. Most guidelines recommend a stepwise approach to treatment, beginning with non-drug interventions and then moving to pharmacological treatment in those most severely affected. Randomised controlled trials show short-term benefits of stimulant medication and atomoxetine. Meta-analyses of blinded trials of non-drug treatments have not yet proven the efficacy of such interventions. Longitudinal studies of ADHD show heightened risk of multiple mental health and social difficulties as well as premature mortality in adult life.
            Bookmark
            • Record: found
            • Abstract: found
            • Article: not found

            Musical training shapes structural brain development.

            The human brain has the remarkable capacity to alter in response to environmental demands. Training-induced structural brain changes have been demonstrated in the healthy adult human brain. However, no study has yet directly related structural brain changes to behavioral changes in the developing brain, addressing the question of whether structural brain differences seen in adults (comparing experts with matched controls) are a product of "nature" (via biological brain predispositions) or "nurture" (via early training). Long-term instrumental music training is an intense, multisensory, and motor experience and offers an ideal opportunity to study structural brain plasticity in the developing brain in correlation with behavioral changes induced by training. Here we demonstrate structural brain changes after only 15 months of musical training in early childhood, which were correlated with improvements in musically relevant motor and auditory skills. These findings shed light on brain plasticity and suggest that structural brain differences in adult experts (whether musicians or experts in other areas) are likely due to training-induced brain plasticity.
              Bookmark
              • Record: found
              • Abstract: found
              • Article: not found

              Rare chromosomal deletions and duplications in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder: a genome-wide analysis

              Summary Background Large, rare chromosomal deletions and duplications known as copy number variants (CNVs) have been implicated in neurodevelopmental disorders similar to attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). We aimed to establish whether burden of CNVs was increased in ADHD, and to investigate whether identified CNVs were enriched for loci previously identified in autism and schizophrenia. Methods We undertook a genome-wide analysis of CNVs in 410 children with ADHD and 1156 unrelated ethnically matched controls from the 1958 British Birth Cohort. Children of white UK origin, aged 5–17 years, who met diagnostic criteria for ADHD or hyperkinetic disorder, but not schizophrenia and autism, were recruited from community child psychiatry and paediatric outpatient clinics. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were genotyped in the ADHD and control groups with two arrays; CNV analysis was limited to SNPs common to both arrays and included only samples with high-quality data. CNVs in the ADHD group were validated with comparative genomic hybridisation. We assessed the genome-wide burden of large (>500 kb), rare (<1% population frequency) CNVs according to the average number of CNVs per sample, with significance assessed via permutation. Locus-specific tests of association were undertaken for test regions defined for all identified CNVs and for 20 loci implicated in autism or schizophrenia. Findings were replicated in 825 Icelandic patients with ADHD and 35 243 Icelandic controls. Findings Data for full analyses were available for 366 children with ADHD and 1047 controls. 57 large, rare CNVs were identified in children with ADHD and 78 in controls, showing a significantly increased rate of CNVs in ADHD (0·156 vs 0·075; p=8·9×10−5). This increased rate of CNVs was particularly high in those with intellectual disability (0·424; p=2·0×10−6), although there was also a significant excess in cases with no such disability (0·125, p=0·0077). An excess of chromosome 16p13.11 duplications was noted in the ADHD group (p=0·0008 after correction for multiple testing), a finding that was replicated in the Icelandic sample (p=0·031). CNVs identified in our ADHD cohort were significantly enriched for loci previously reported in both autism (p=0·0095) and schizophrenia (p=0·010). Interpretation Our findings provide genetic evidence of an increased rate of large CNVs in individuals with ADHD and suggest that ADHD is not purely a social construct. Funding Action Research; Baily Thomas Charitable Trust; Wellcome Trust; UK Medical Research Council; European Union.
                Bookmark

                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Journal
                Front Psychol
                Front Psychol
                Front. Psychol.
                Frontiers in Psychology
                Frontiers Media S.A.
                1664-1078
                09 June 2017
                2017
                : 8
                : 928
                Affiliations
                [1]Department of Psychology, University of Oviedo Oviedo, Spain
                Author notes

                Edited by: José Jesús Gázquez, University of Almería, Spain

                Reviewed by: Claudio Longobardi, University of Turin, Italy; Svend Brinkmann, Aalborg University, Denmark; Susan Hawthorne, St. Catherine University, United States

                *Correspondence: Marino Pérez-Álvarez, marino@ 123456uniovi.es

                This article was submitted to Educational Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology

                Article
                10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00928
                5465299
                28649208
                42b5c61c-c99d-4ff9-97ca-f02b129ddbfa
                Copyright © 2017 Pérez-Álvarez.

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

                History
                : 09 February 2017
                : 22 May 2017
                Page count
                Figures: 0, Tables: 0, Equations: 0, References: 83, Pages: 13, Words: 0
                Categories
                Psychology
                Hypothesis and Theory

                Clinical Psychology & Psychiatry
                accidental intolerance,adhd,aristotle’s four causes,charcot effect,semiotic mediator

                Comments

                Comment on this article