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Showing posts with label dopamine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dopamine. Show all posts

From the Publishers of 2e Newsletter

ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION in their children are very common concerns among parents in the 2e community. The Wall Street Journal ran an article about mental health issues in college students and how educators should accommodate them. According to the article, a rising number of students are registering psychological problems with college disability offices. Read the article.
LDs, THE ADA, AND COLLEGE. A woman student was dismissed in 2003 from George Washington University Medical School after repeated warnings that she was not meeting academic standards. Shortly before the dismissal, she sought to establish that her academic performance was related to learning disabilities, undergoing evaluation and receiving a diagnosis of dyslexia and a mild processing speed disorder. She contended the dismissal violated her rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Recently, as U.S. district court ruled in the the university's favor, deciding that the student had failed to demonstrate that her difficulties were from her LD as opposed to study habits and a heavy schedule of extracurricular activities. Read the article.
DOPAMINE, AD/HD, AND MOTIVATION. Scientific American reviewed a study where researchers established a positive correlation between positive dopamine function in the brain and motivation trait scores on a personality test. They also showed a correlation between the CAARS AD/HD symptom test and the motivation score (i.e, fewer symptoms, more  motivation. The conclusion: a disrupted dopamine pathway is associated with lower motivation and with AD/HD. The review does not mention that there are several types of AD/HD, but insofar as the study applies to at least one type it might be of interest to parents, educators, and clinicians who deal with AD/HD children. Find the article.
AN ASPIE'S MEMORY helps him connect with other people now that he's in his teens, according to an essay in the Washington Post. At first it was remembering birthdays... then addresses... then movie release dates... and then being able to connect names, birthdates, and movie releases to amaze family and friends.  Read more. 
THAT'S IT! More next week...

COMMON WISDOM VERSUS COGNITIVE SCIENCE. That's the face-off described in an article titled "Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits" in The New York Times. Here are two examples from the article. Researchers have found that when children study in different places, rather than simply in one room, they learn better. And studying a variety of material in a single session, rather than concentrating on one topic, seems to work better. And then, of course, there's the issue of "learning styles." Find the article.

PUT YOUR HAND DOWN, SMARTY... and let one of the other kids answer the teacher's question. If the brightest kids in the class are forced to do that, a UK professor says, it can help the class as a whole learn more quickly. Find out more.

GENES, DOPAMINE, AND GPA. A Florida researcher has published a paper linking certain dopamine gene variations to grades, and the effects can be large. Says the researcher, "For example, the GPA of a student with specific variants of three dopaminergic genes might be around 2.8, versus a GPA of around 3.3 without the variants." Read more.

RESOURCES FROM AACAP. The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, in response to the recent New York Times article we blogged about concerning a young child's misdiagnosis and over-medication, has listed some of its resources and guidelines for medications for young people. One is a "Practice Parameter on the Use of Psychotropic Medicine in Children and Adolescents"; find it here. For families, the Academy offers "Psychiatric Medication for Children and Adolescents," a three-part resource:

If you have a bright young person on meds, check these out.

"DARK" FICTION AND TEEN BRAINS. Got a gifted or 2e child who loves Harry Potter or Twilight? Over the weekend, Washington Post education writer Valerie Strauss noted a conference at Cambridge University called "The Emergent Adult -- Adolescent Literature and Culture.” The conference was multidisciplinary in nature and focused on the effects of teenage fiction in many media -- effects that might be psychological, physiological, chemical, or sociological. Strauss did an email Q&A with the conference organizer to try to pin down some of the effects, in the process covering topics such as the "deep imprints" of dark fiction such as the Harry Potter series; possible negative effects; trends in young adult literature; and what parents should do about letting kids read the stuff (nothing except maybe discuss it with them). Read the column.