Fixated by Screens, but Seemingly Nothing Else

"My child can sit and watch TV for hours, he can’t have A.D.H.D."

In fact, a child’s ability to stay focused on a screen, though not anywhere else, is actually characteristic of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. There are complex behavioral and neurological connections linking screens and attention, and many experts believe that these children do spend more time playing video games and watching television than their peers.

But is a child’s fascination with the screen a cause or an effect of attention problems — or both? It’s a complicated question that researchers are still struggling to figure out.

According to the New York Times, the kind of concentration that children bring to video games and television is not the kind they need to succeed in school or elsewhere in real life, according to Dr. Christopher Lucas, associate professor of child psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine. “It’s not sustained attention in the absence of rewards,” he said. “It’s sustained attention with frequent intermittent rewards.”

The child may be playing for points accumulated, or levels achieved, but the brain’s reward may be the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine. Children with A.D.H.D. may find video games even more gratifying than other children do because their dopamine reward circuitry may be otherwise deficient. At least one study has found that when children with A.D.H.D. were treated with methylphenidate (Ritalin), which increases dopamine activity in the brain, they played video games less. The authors suggested that video games might serve as a kind of self-medication for these children.

So increased screen time may be a consequence of A.D.H.D., but some researchers fear it may be a cause, as well. Some studies have found that children who spend more time in front of the screen are more likely to develop attention problems later on. In a 2010 study in the journal Pediatrics, viewing more television and playing more video games were associated with subsequent attention problems in both schoolchildren and college undergraduates. The stimulation that video games provide “is really about the pacing, how fast the scene changes per minute,” said Dr. Dimitri Christakis , a pediatrician at the University of Washington School of Medicine who studies children and media. If a child’s brain gets habituated to that pace and to the extreme alertness needed to keep responding and winning, he said, the child ultimately may “find the realities of the world underwhelming, understimulating.”

This article really caught my eye due to the fact that A.D.H.D. is becoming more and more common among children and teens. Sometimes I feel that this so called "disease" is not a disease at all; I feel that it is somewhat of an excuse. That is my personal opinion. I just found it very interesting that kids with A.D.H.D. use television and video games to feel better. I also found a great article with opinions from patients about A.D.H.D.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/05/21/health/healthguide/TE_ADHD_CLIPS.html?ref=views

Study Suggests a Relationship Between Migraine Headaches in Children and a Common Heart Defect

Roughly 15% of children suffer from migraines, and approximately one-third of these affected children have migraines with aura, a collection of symptoms that can include weakness, blind spots, and even hallucinations. According to ScienceDaily, although the causes of migraines are unclear, a new study in The Journal of Pediatrics suggests a connection between migraine headaches in children and a heart defect called patent foramen ovale, which affects 25% of people in the U.S.

Dr. Rachel McCandless and colleagues from the Primary Children's Medical Center and the University of Utah studied children 6-18 years old who were diagnosed with migraines between 2008 and 2009. The researchers took two-dimensional echocardiograms (sonogram of the heart) of each child's heart, looking for a patent foramen ovale (PFO), a common defect in the wall between the two upper chambers of the heart. Although a PFO is not necessarily dangerous, it can allow unfiltered blood to bypass the lungs and circulate throughout the body. As Dr. McCandless explains, "Some adult studies have suggested a link between having a PFO and migraine headaches."

Of the studied children who had migraines with aura, 50% also had a PFO; this is nearly double the PFO rate of the general population. However, only 25% of children who had migraines without aura had a PFO. Dr. McCandless and colleagues hypothesize that if a causal relationship can be established, closure of a PFO with a catheter device may help in the treatment of certain kinds of migraines, specifically migraines with aura. It is her hope that "our study will help guide future research about this difficult problem."

I chose this article due to the fact that a close friend of mine suffers from migraines. It is terrible to see what she has to go through when she has a migraine. She has them so bad that she sometimes ends up vomiting from the pain. I thought it was really interesting how they related migraines to a heart defect. Who would've thought something wrong with the heart could cause pain in your head?