Learning Never Stops!

The author of this wonderful book combines neuroscience and phychology to help dispel some the myths people have surrounding Attention Deficit Disorder. I could hardly put it down and often found myself lost within the pages for minutes on end. Much better than ‘Driven to Distraction’ IMO. Damn, what time was that meeting tomorrow? Oh yeah, I actually bought this for a family member who suffers from ADHD, so the doctor says. I’m thinking about buying a copy for everyone in my immediate family and probobly even a few distant cousins I haven’t seen in years. Man, I wonder how old Doris is now anyway. Wasn’t she the one that was adopted? No, now that I think about it I’m pretty sure that was Greg. Doris must have been the one with the irritable bowel.

Anywho, this book has helped me out tremedously and is easily the best I have read on the topic. Highly recommended!
Rating: 4 / 5

Like many who are reading these kinds of reviews, that is, reviews of books about ADD and ADHD, I can be a little scatterbrained, sure, like the time I was driving to work and saw a person I thought I knew walking down the sidewalk, so I braked pretty hard to stop and yell out “hi” but forgetting ha ha that I was still in the middle of traffic. Boy the guy behind me was steamed but luckily for me he had good reflexes and didn’t hit me, unlike the guy who did rear-end me at a traffic light when we were both stopped. Can you believe that? I was behind another car that didn’t turn right away (we were in the left-turn lane) when the light changed to green and the guy behind me decided to accelerate as soon as the light changed apparently forgetting that two other cars were still ahead of him! What a bozo! When I felt that rude jolt I was so mad I jumped out of the car yelling at the top of my lungs but luckily there didn’t appear to be any permanent damage, unlike the time I was backing out of a very narrow garage and ripped off my right side-view mirror of the edge of the garage door frame. That was an expensive little mistake. What was I talking about? Oh yeah, ADD and ADHD.

Anyway this is a fantastic book written by an acknowledged expert in the field and the creator of the Brown Attention Deficit Disorder Scales (BADDS) which are basically different tests for different age groups that rate to what extent you exhibit the symptoms of ADD and ADHD, according to the Brown Model of ADD Syndrome which posits six separate clusters of executive functions impaired in ADD, these clusters being 1) Activation, 2) Focus, 3) Effort, 4) Emotion, 5) Memory, and 6) Action. Dr. Brown explains in detail each of these in his book, but suffice it to say that these clusters must work together harmoniously in order for people to manage and execute daily tasks both in the short and long term, which is not to say that these executive functions are always working together harmoniously in “normal” people, but that the difference with people exhibiting ADD symptoms is one of degree rather than kind with regard to impairment of these functions. Dr. Brown explains this much better, of course, being an acknowledged expert in the field, which makes you wonder just who is doing all the acknowledging, since I could acknowledge him but I’m guessing that’s not what the “acknowledged” in acknowledged expert refers to, since I am not a clinical or research or even theoretical psychologist, psychiatrist, neurologist, or brain or behavior scientist of any kind.

But let’s just say, for the purpose of wrapping things up, since I do have a tendency to ramble, or divagate, if you will, that Dr. Brown explains not only the symptoms of ADD and ADHD, but also clears up a lot of misconceptions and prejudices associated with these disorders, namely, that somehow the lack of focus can be overcome by sheer will, when most experts agree that the root causes of ADD have both a genetic and neurobiological component. That’s clever, see, because genetics is not destiny, but rather how those genes are expressed (both literally in the protein sense and metaphorically in the phenotypic sense) is in large part a function of environment, i.e. “nature via nurture” as Matt Ridley succinctly put it. Conversely, or rather similarly, neurobiology, although certainly genetic in its foundations, again expresses itself in discrete neurochemical and neurophysiological states in response to environmental stimuli. But here’s the larger question: does it even make sense to talk of ADD and ADHD as diseases, or even impairments? I mean, just because the industrial revolution made us all slaves to the clock and conformity and regularity doesn’t mean people with ADD and ADHD are “abnormal.” It simply means these people are less able to function successfully in the present society. But successful by whose standards? If I’m an artist or writer dependent upon my creativity and nonconformity and flights of fancy and whim, then anything diminishing those qualities would be an impairment. I’m not hoping to resolve the sociological implications of labeling people who don’t automatically function like good little cogs in the machinery of society in this little review, but if I have provided some information, food for thought, or even a reaction, good or bad, then I’ve done something, haven’t I?
Rating: 5 / 5