Skip to content

News Health

Health News, Tips, and More

Menu
  • Disclaimer
  • Related Sites
Menu

Some researches show possibilities for further advancet treatment of ADHD

Posted on January 31, 2010 by News Health

An Australian-German team of scientists at Freie Universitat and the Queensland Brain Institute in Brisbane, Australia, has found a way to measure the attention span of a fly. The findings could lead to further advances in the understanding of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism in humans.

Associate Professor Bruno van Swinderen at the Queensland Brain Institute in Brisbane and Dr. Björn Brembs at Freie Universität combined genetic techniques with brain recordings and behavioral testing. They found different mutations that either increase or decrease a fly’s attention span.

Using the genetic fruit fly model, Drosophila melanogaster, van Swinderen found that a fly’s level of distractibility is finely tuned to allow “normal” behavioral responses to a constantly changing environment. He said, “We now have the two ends of an attention spectrum in our model. We have a fly memory mutant that is hard to distract and another fly memory mutant that’s too distractible. They both have the same result – they don’t learn well but for completely different reasons, not unlike human patients afflicted with autism and ADHD.”

The fruit flies were fed methylphenidate, which is sold under the brand name Ritalin and is used to treat patients with ADHD. The researchers found the drug had similar effects on fruit flies as it did on people: it helped the distractible flies to pay attention to visual stimuli.

“It suggests there may be similar pathways in the brains of fruit flies and humans, which means we now have a simple reductionist model, with all the genetic tools that go along with it, to try to understand what exactly this drug is doing,” according to van Swinderen. Heisenberg fellow Brembs agrees: “These surprising parallels between insects and humans may point to a general, common functional organization of brains.”

source:   http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/177218.php

2 thoughts on “Some researches show possibilities for further advancet treatment of ADHD”

  1. elektronik says:
    April 14, 2010 at 9:43 pm

    Hi, Well this was definitely something new, I really liked it as I am new to this

  2. Donnell Cioppa says:
    February 3, 2011 at 4:18 am

    Wow, I never new that, much appreciated.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Posts

  • Dental Hygiene Made Easy With This Advice
  • Ways to Live Your Healthiest Life
  • Altering Your Home to Live With a Disability at 60
  • 10 Tips for Better Life Health and Wellness
  • Ways to Broaden and Improve Your Wellness Perspective
  • Do You Struggle to Focus on Your Mental Health? Tips for Creating Habits and Finding Hobbies for Yourself
  • What to Know About Bowel Endometriosis Surgery
  • How to Plan an Objective for Your Health and Fitness Event
  • Dental Hygiene Made Easy With This Advice
  • What to Expect During the First Week of Drug Rehab

Archives

September 2023
M T W T F S S
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
252627282930  
« Aug    
© 2023 News Health | Powered by Superbs Personal Blog theme