Tag Archives: Behavior

Fragile Flexibility (EF Skills Series)

Brain Bits, Mind Matters, , , , , , , ,

In young children, the schema of their quality world usually revolves around a caregiver or a person who they consider as important in the development of their identity. Their interests initially mimic from imagining that they are versions of the adults they are surrounded by until they are exposed to wider environments, peers, language, media, and then a wholistic interest database emerges from the conglomeration and exposure.

It also makes sense that the younger the child, the more questions they ask. Rarely would you find a child between the ages of 3-5 years come into contact with adults who have set values or biases of themselves concerning what’s ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ around the way they perceive the world. This type of mental flexibility, of mixing and matching new, or new-old ideas in their youth is also directly proportional to the physical activity that they engage in. The pushing of limits of their physical capacities around places that are close to the natural world like garden parks, or places that have been landscaped for the socialization of little people like urban parks are indicators of their levels of mindful curiosity.

It certainly becomes less correlational when children become older, the degree or type of questions with physical movement. The overt questions may turn into musings and conformity is usually expected when school-age commences. Physical movement is timed if the child is not involved in organized sports or games. Just the same, however, the degree of flexibility in these minds depends on the environment they take in, and the imagination that is left from viewing the world from their youth. Martinez and Riba’s 2021 study, Cognitive Flexibility in Schoolchild Through the Graphic Representation of Movement postulates that Neuroconstructivism is the progressive complexity of mental representation over the course of cognitive development and the role of the graphic representation of movement in the transformation of mental schemas, cognitive flexibility, and representational complexity.

They also discuss that In this differential trajectory, mental representation is a key element for cognitive development and for understanding the emergence of child drawing, and changes thereof, as a graphic representation of internalized models of reality (Sirois et al., 2008). A child’s drawing is the first marker that enables the study of mental representation as an external manifestation of internalized reality, by showing what is known about it.

Moreover, events are naturally more attractive than objects, and their foremost feature is their movement. Therefore, part of the content of the first mental representations turns around the identity of events, objects, and people, and their movement and position, which forms the basis of the dynamic representations produced. The first external representative manifestation is the child’s scribble, in which the action of the drawing already contains expressive and representational meanings relating to shapes, movements, and emotions (Quaglia et al., 2015), even if there is no real figure that relates to a meaningful movement for representational purpose.

Such cognitive flexibility is what drives competition in a crowd. The narratives that may have been handed down from authority figures that were used to set ‘safety’ limits, such as limiting or eliminating outdoor time due to the location of where the child resides, or in this recent case the pandemic, inadvertently have pared down the curiosity factor toward the external influences. Subsitutions by devices and programs on the web were meant to digitize the parallel experience of the world beyond the home, however, without the multisensorial inundation of an experience, the ideas being written are almost dream-like. They may be able to describe a forest of trees in a contextual litany of facts, but ask them about the experience and then they are puzzled.

So do you make up for lost cognitive flexibility time for children? Or for yourself as a person of structure and routine? The answer is no. It is more important to make active choices to be exposed to the internal and external worlds that are immediate and to ensure that physical movements are consciously added in a 24 hour period than to make up for the over a year of standing still. Scientific studies have isolated the executive functions that aim at cognitive flexibility, which include the abilities to shift one’s thinking (flexibility), updating the learning that has been made based on the thinking shift (working memory), and response inhibition. In Uddin’s 2021 study, Cognitive and behavioural flexibility: neural mechanisms and clinical considerations she explains the core processes in thinking flexibility with this figure:

Fig. 1

Fig. 1: Core cognitive processes and brain network interactions underlying flexibility in the human brain. From: Cognitive and behavioural flexibility: neural mechanisms and clinical considerations

These brain maps were established with the use of automated meta-analyses of published functional neuroimaging studies can be conducted with Neurosynth, a Web-based platform that uses text mining to extract activation coordinates from studies reporting on a specific psychological term of interest and machine learning to estimate the likelihood that activation maps are associated with specific psychological terms, thus creating a mapping between neural and cognitive states. In the study, Neurosynth reveals that brain imaging studies including the terms ‘shifting’, ‘updating’ and ‘inhibition’ report highly overlapping patterns of activation in lateral frontoparietal and mid-cingulo-insular brain regions, underscoring the difficulty of isolating the construct of flexibility from associated executive functions.

This means that cognitive flexibility is an activity that requires the whole brain, and if that is the case, then it requires a complete human experience. In an article by Sahakian, et. al in the World Economic Forum site called, Why is cognitive flexibility important and how can you improve it? they indicate that Cognitive flexibility provides us with the ability to see that what we are doing is not leading to success and to make the appropriate changes to achieve it. Flexible thinking is key to creativity – in other words, the ability to think of new ideas, make novel connections between ideas, and make new inventions. It also supports academic and work skills such as problem-solving.

They also write that cognitive flexibility can also help protect against a number of biases, such as confirmation bias. That’s because people who are cognitively flexible are better at recognizing potential faults and difficulties in themselves and using strategies to overcome these faults. See their table below showing the flexibility representations:

How do we become adept at choosing to be flexible especially in situations that give little determination of what we can control? Aside from practicing the principles of evidence-based psychological therapy which allows people to change their patterns of thoughts and behavior (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or CBT), Structure learning has been proven to be potentially another way. It has been described as a person’s ability to extract information about the structure of a complex environment and then decipher initially incomprehensible streams of sensory information via the process of elimination. This specific type of learning taps into the similar frontal and striatal brain regions as cognitive flexibility, thus exposure and practice are the keys to successful learning.

Go forth, be human, and explore!

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Here We Go: School and Work 2.0

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In the dissection of the word rebirth comes the prefix re- which means anew or afresh, while birth means the beginning or coming into existence of something, As many monikers have been given to the resumption of the midst of Covid-19 regulations and the slow burn of the worldwide pandemic, re-birthing is the closest single-word descriptor that would run the gamut of the experience right now.

The expectation that government regulations alone or science alone, not together as a unit, would cut down the life span of the virus as we have known it to be is a fault of object permanent thinking. It is after all safer to default to what is comfortable, the known black or white options than the combination of fidelity thinking. Fear or courage, anger or happiness, peace or war. We could be discussing literature themes with these high octane emotions however it does not stretch the imagination to see when one leaves the physical or digital cocoon that the either-or linear thinking is the driver of humans when faced with a problem not easily handled with prior learning or solutions.

We had discussed in previous articles how pro-social behaviors and the need for human interaction are the basis of societal stability, including the economic and academic worlds that have been in such heated contentious situations of late. Whoever said that idle hands are the devil’s playground did not take into account a forced stop, wherever one was, for longer than a few weeks. So it would make sense as people are (figuratively) dragged out of their homes and homely conditions back to what was once was normed, there will be re-birthing: kicking, screaming, and long-term adjustment.

But as mentioned, we have many brain states and developmental ages to think about in 2.0. We have the younger people who marked their schooling milestones in front of a computer screen instead of on a playing ground or person-to-person peer and teacher routine. And then there are the adults who have been lucky enough to love their jobs cause they loved them back, swing right back into it without missing a beat. And then we have those in-between who are school-aged to vocationally transitioning adults who had more than enough time in their hands to do versions of homework and self-work.

In the 2.0, there needs to be consideration of the shifts in skill sets and motivation for those skills. A curious question to ask is how did I tend to my critical thinking and literacy growth when forcibly paused? Did I overindulge in the reality to the point of paralysis? Or was I intentional in being an autodidact and directed a diet of reality, fantasy, and mindfulness worlds? How purposeful was I in conserving my energies when surrounded by the same people for those many weeks, a month?

The re-birthing of young minds into the rigor of classrooms reveals the sample size of how many adults are functioning. They first enter incautious, paralleled worlds, and the younger they are, especially if going back to school in a new environment, require a lot of effort in retooling their socializing selves. Add socializing with a mask, when you can read only the top half of a peer or school staff member’s face adds a layer of complexity — which of the emotions am I reading correctly if at all?

The whole idea that thinking critically was siloed for education or for that period where one was required to analyze text is so pre-pandemic. Without complete access to someone’s affect, body language is half calculated, or for those who have to be around a lot of people every day now, exaggerated so as not to be miscalculated. In a text from a section called Critical Literacy from a site that supports children’s literacy in the 20th century in Saskatchewan, CN, defines Literacy as a process that involves a continuum of interrelated skills, practices, and learnings that contribute to the development of an individual’s ability to understand, communicate, and participate in a variety of roles ( i.e., parent, citizen, and worker) and settings, in the home, at work, in education, and in the community.

In essence, Literacy includes Listening and speaking; reading and writing; observing, viewing and representing; numeracy; use of technology such as computers and other smart devices. Literacy is essential to and can influence the ability to think critically, make decisions, solve problems, and resolve conflicts. To further expand on critical literacy, the Brazilian educator and educator Paolo Freire in 1970 posits that, “Critical literacy views readers as active participants in the reading process and invites them to move beyond passively accepting the text’s message to question, examine, or dispute the power relations that exist between readers and authors. It focuses on issues of power and promotes reflection, transformation, and action.”

Now for the context of this article, reading is not limited to a written, visual exposition of the text. Reading here is the brain’s neuronal processing of an experience when stimuli are presented to it, either internally or externally propelled. The interpretation of what is read connects to the previous memories and experiences of the person ‘reading’ thus, the ‘text’ can be anything that causes thought to make inferences.

Ironically people read their living and nonliving environments all the time, actively or passively. The physical world interacts with the physical self first before the brain and the mind creates internal classifications of the experience – not at all similar to the binary experience of the emotions mentioned earlier. Neuronal pathways are constantly reassessing what was known to be committed as knowledge prior and reconfigured when necessary.

We are always critically receiving and giving literacy text without full awareness most of the time. To carve metacognition intended text production is key; questions need to be asked before statements, theories about other human experiences need to be tested before conclusions are drawn. Salisbury University’s Counseling Center adopts these 7 Critical Reading Strategies that are also significant for human contextual reading:

  1. PREVIEWING– learning about a text before reading it. Reviewing what the sensory systems are telling you as the reader of a person without adding judgment.
  2. CONTEXTUALIZING-placing a text in historical, biographical, cultural
    contexts    , from the personal, local and to the global environments.
  3. QUESTIONING TO UNDERSTAND/REMEMBER– asking questions about
    the content based upon the preview and the contexts to provide pre-hypothesis of the person whose experience is being read.
  4. REFLECTING ON CHALLENGES TO BELIEFS/ VALUES-examining
    personal responses and one’s previous emotional lives attached or detached from the person whose experience is being read.
  5. OUTLINING and SUMMARIZING– identifying main ideas and restating in
    your own words     after making concrete connections to the text of the person being read and theories proven or disproven.
  6. EVALUATING AN ARGUMENT– testing logic of a text when there is volatility in the reading of the person’s experience that supports polarity within the self instead of clarity.
  7. COMPARING and CONTRASTING RELATED READING – exploring likenesses and differences, reaching for empathy and pro-social intentions when making connections.

Thus in the period of 2.0, read with care. At this rate, we are all emergent readers from a collectively conscious experience that only centenarians could navigate for and with us. Reading with purpose, reading with intensity, and becoming critically literate will see us and our brains on a steady course.

ESNP Podcast 13: The Powerful Necessity of Touch

ESNP Podcast 8: User-Friendly Interpretation on Sensory Processing Science and The Learner’s Consciousness: Part Two

ESNP Podcast 7: User-Friendly Interpretation on Sensory Processing Science and The Learner’s Consciousness: Part One

User-Friendly Interpretation on Sensory Processing Science and The Learner’s Consciousness: Part One

Body Breakthroughs, , , , , , , ,

We have touched on the subject on our previous articles on how negative behavior is often times intermixed or interpreted as willful or choice-driven, while in some cases, these behaviors have an underlying sensory processing root. To cite a specific example, let’s say that one  who utilizes public transportation when going to work daily is unable to tolerate other people’s conversations on the shared space and would require noise cancelling headphones to be able to survive the commute.  What we oftentimes call as our preferences or likes boil down to what ‘makes sense’ or ‘computes’ with the section of the brain that processes all of the sensorimotor experience: the temporo-parietal sliver that receives and interprets all of what surrounds us and is experienced within us.

Because these systems are so automatic, just as the heart beats without us having to remind it to do so, we often take it for granted that without the ‘correct’ interpretation of what is going on, we will not make the appropriate response. Majority of our reflexes also come from this section of automaticity due to either a retrieved and learned sensory experience (e.g. touching a boiling kettle once before will permanently recall the sensory experience of fight-or-flight burning pain on the particular body part).

The Sensory Processing of a Learner: Many Intelligence Types

Let’s Look at the two pictures below. On the left side you will notice that we have named the seven (7) senses of the body as primarily responsible in processing the information from the environment.  The vision,  hearing,  smell,  touch,  taste,  movement or kinesthetic sense, and proprioception or position in space sense all come together and interpret the environment for the person based on each of the sensation’s primary function. Thus we call this the Stimulation Source.  We will discuss the details of processing science in the next section. The Stimulation Source in the simplest sense is  the interpretation of the sensations in the brain after it had been given meaning by the cerebral cortex, specifically the temporo-parietal sections. These are the many directions an interpretation of the sensations can be expressed by a person: visual-spatial, bodily kinesthetic,  musical, interpersonal,  intrapersonal, musical,  linguustic, logical-mathematical,  and ecological. These were initially introduced into the mainstream by Howard Gardner in his Theory of Multiple Intelligences.  In our practice however we take it a step further and consider it as the Learner’s Response.  What we have seen is that the interpretation of the senses can only be expressed accordingly based on the abilities of the brain to coordinate the meaning of the sensations received,  thus the Learner’s Response is tied to a person’s natural inclination dependent on the correct release of the information to the external environment.

The Learner's Response: Sensations Transformed into Many Intelligences
The Learner’s Response: Sensations Transformed into Many Intelligences

The Stimulation Source: Seven Bodily Sesnations
The Stimulation Source: Seven Bodily Senses Gathering Information from the environment

If we created an example from listening to ones ipod,  as soon as the brain realizes that  it’s the sense of hearing that is stimulating it, the sound is processed and given meaning by the cerebral cortex and then sent back out to the Learner. Depending on the Learner’s natural abilities, the responses will vary from person to person. One who is kinesthetic may decide to get up and dance.  One who is visual-spatial may decide to research the singer online for a live version of the song. While someone who is intrapersonal may become reflective and try too recall an association of the song with a memory or a personal thought. This explains why even if the senses are receiving the information from the environment accurately, the responses vary from  person to person depending on their natural ability.

Sensory Processing Science: A. Jean Ayres in User-Friendly Language

Dr. A. Jean  Ayres, the pioneering Occupational Therapist in sensory integration theory summed up best the process of  the body’s ability to process sensory input. She posited that there were 7 steps that went into the brain’s processing: reception, detection, integration, praxis, discrimination, postural responses and modulation. She also did say that these steps are done in heirarchy, in order. If one step is missing, then the processing becomes faulty and the brain will not be able to send out the accurate interpretation to the learner to respond to. And of all of these steps, it is Sensory Modulation that is externalized by the Learner; by having a sensory modulation disorder, that is the obvious signal there is a hiccup in the flow of the sensory system from the einformation gathering to the brain processing, to of course the Learner’s responses.

The Sensory Processing Science: User-Friendly Language
The Sensory Processing Science: User-Friendly Language

Focus on Sensory Modulation Disorder: Impact on Learner’s Consciousness

As was mentioned in the previous section, it is the Sensory Modulation Section that mist if not all sensory issues are evidenced, based on Learner’s Response.  Now there are several types of Sensory Processing Disorders: Sensory Modulation Disorders (Sensory Hypo and Hypersensitivity,  and Sensory Seeking), Postural Disorders, and Sensory Discrimination Disorders. Of all of these however,  it has bern shown that Sensory Modulation,  the very last step of the hierarchy of sensory pricessing has the most damaging effects on the Learner’s ability to process academic and social information.

For specific details on the manifestations of Sensory Modulation Disorder, we created a table using research information by Carol Kranowitz in her book, The Out of Sync Child.

Refer to the table below:

Synthesized Sensory Modulation Disorder Chart (As Based Off of Carol kranowitz)
Synthesized Sensory Modulation Disorder Chart (As Based Off of Carol Stock Kranowitz)

Now that we have made the connection between the Learner’s Response to Stimulaton Source, how then can we correct the sensory modulation deficits? The answer: An Executive Functioning- Sensory Based Diet of course, composed of targeted activities  from a sensation to cognitive develomental perspective that are aimed to correct the gathering-interpretation process in order to align the learning responses as well . That discussion will be part two of this discussion, the next post to this series. In the meantime, check out our ESNP Recommends tab for more resources and our articles under Body Breakthroughs for additional ideas.

The Powerful Necessity of TOUCH

Body Breakthroughs, , , , , , , , ,
Hugs communicate a lot more than you think
Hugs communicate a lot more than you think

If you live in a metropolitan area, chances are you have had the pleasure of using public transportation to get around. Buses or trains, or both, and the many others who accompany you in the journey to and from destinations. In these modes of transport, rush hour can get harrowing; packed like a can of sardines until it wouldn’t even matter if you had a bar to hold on to to maintain your balance. The sheer volume of people in your personal space is enough to keep you stuck wherever you are sitting or standing.

And if this is most human touch you experience per day, that may not be enough. Reason: our brains are wired to be touched.

University of Miami’s Touch Research Institute in early 2014 had done extensive research in the area of human touch.Their results have revealed that human touch has wide-ranging physical and emotional benefits for people of all age groups. In the Institute’s studies, they discovered touch lessened pain, improved pulmonary function, increased growth in infants, lowered blood glucose and improved immune function. Human touch is extremely important for all ages, but by the time children reach their teen years, they receive only half as much touching as they did when they were infants. Adults touch each other even less.

The researchers in Miami also found that touch with moderate pressure stimulates the vagus nerve which is responsible for slowing the heart rate and lowering blood pressure. This produces a state that is relaxed, less closed off, but more attentive. Even the Institute’s medical staff and students that received massages for 15 minutes a day over the course of a month were more accurate and took less time on math performance tests than their counterparts who did not receive massages, more proof that touch also decreases stress hormone function and boosts immune systems.

It is then no surprise to learn of evidence pointing to the levels of aggression and violence among children is related to lack of touching.

Cross species touch speak volumes
Cross species touch speak volumes

Touch Research Institute conducted two separate studies, one with French children and one with American children to determine the degree of touch they received from their parents in relation to displays of aggression. The researchers found that French children received more touching from parents and their peers and were less aggressive than their American counterparts. American children on the contrary had less physical interaction with their parents and tended to touch themselves more than they touched their peers (e.g. playing with hair).

And in 2009,  DePauw University psychologist Matthew Hertenstein studied the person’s ability to interpret emotional content via other non-verbal means with the sensory cortex.  Hertenstein had volunteers attempt to communicate a list of emotions to a blindfolded stranger solely through touch, of which many participants were apprehensive about the experiment. “This is a touch-phobic society,” he says. “We’re not used to touching strangers, or even our friends, necessarily.”

The result? They did touch, all for the benefit of science after all. The results suggest that for all our Pre-Frontal Cortex caution about touching, we are hard-wired with the capacity to send and receive emotional signals solely by touching, one of our sensory systems. Herenstein was surprised at the results, thinking that the results were going to be at a chance level of 25 percent. Instead, participants were able to clearly identify and communicate eight distinct emotions (anger, fear, disgust, love,gratitude, sympathy, happiness, and sadness)  all with accuracy rates as high as 78 percent.

Even for those who suffer from seizures can benefit from therapeutic touch.  Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) such as combining Acupuncture and Massage Therapy have been found to reduce seizures. Results from studies in China and Germany as per the College of Oriental Medicine have also proven to control abnormal brain activity that causes the seizures.

For the rest of us, average touch is relative. There is debate as to how many hugs one is required to receive per day to stay emotionally and mentally healthy — a range from 8-11 per day. And that is something we can all aim for, in spite of the speed we travel, the inconvenience of daily living, and the noise all around us.

Even they know...many hugs a day keeps one healthy!
Even they know…many hugs a day keeps one healthy!

Let’s have the animals teach us how it’s really done.

The University of Florida recently suggested that animals really wanted human contact after all. Lindsay Mehrkam, a University of Florida doctoral student in psychology with psychology professor Nicole Dorey have published a paper in the journal Zoo Biology that examined different types of enrichment preferences specifically in zoo-housed animals. 

For this study, the pair chose three tortoises at the Santa Fe Teaching Zoo in Gainesville, Florida named Larry, Moe and Curly. They were given four choices of keeper interaction: playing with a large rubber ball or under a water sprinkler, or having their shells scrubbed or necks rubbed. The zookeepers had used all of these amenities at least twice a month for several years at the zoo.

The inanimate object and the human were placed on opposite sides of the enclosure while the tortoises were released from the barn and had five minutes to make a choice. Consistently, they chose their human companion over the object!

Mehrkam said, “Not only did they prefer keeper interaction overall compared to the traditional forms of enrichment, but the individual tortoises had preferences for the kind of interaction they wanted. Larry and Curly like having their necks rubbed. Moe liked the shell scrubbing.”

Sustaining Holiday-esque Happiness Day After Day

Mind Matters, , , , , , , ,

The momentum to the last few days the end of the year can only be described as lightning speed. The quick high from lights and decorations everywhere you turn, reasons to be giving and forgiving (including to one’s self), and the songs overplayed and remixed in ways they shouldn’t be are all reminders that the end of the year is going to be here before you know it.

There are those of us who dread the end of the year for the excess, the commercialism, the lack of potentially peaceful relative gatherings, or worse, the dreaded office holiday party with several colleagues one is challenged tolerating every work day.  On a darker note, there are those who are in the constant state of loneliness throughout the year and this bright, loud, and extra hustled time of year pushes their fragile states even further inward, to a place of no physical return in some cases.

The recognizable flicker of your consciousness is about to commence...
The recognizable flicker of your consciousness is about to commence…

Now, stop. Just pause, and stop. There is silence if you don’t try too hard to listen for it. The world can move quickly and hurriedly around you but you are STILL. Just for 2 seconds, then 4, then 8…count up in two’s till you get to 12 and then, exhale to a smile.

You just gave yourself enough mind time to release whatever minuscule irritation, immaterial worry, or insane task load  that was pushing your brain to the brink of emotional amygdala detachment. Do you need another one? Repeat…stop, just pause and stop. Be still for 2 seconds, then 4, then 8…count up in two’s till you get to 12 and then, exhale to a smile.

Be personal to yourself. Make mental notes to yourself as you lift your own consciousness from the recesses of living. Write yourself an air note of happy holidays and great next years, and have resolutions that resolve in minutes and not months. You’d be surprised how much more realistic these promises to yourself as your own person can be.

Branch the material with the immaterial…how did you get here to the end of the year in the first place? Flashback key moments of the year, happy, sad, angry, moments of triumph and heartbreak — those pathways lead you to the very place you are standing in right now.

Reach in, dive in. You aren’t done yet, many compartments of your consciousness are resurfacing. Just because you haven’t seen them before or are seeing them again for the first time in a long time doesn’t make them non-existent. Set them free, 2 seconds at a time, 4, 6, till you get to 12.

Happy holidays have just planted themselves in your consciousness…you took time for yourself just now. Thank you to you. Now resume life a little bit lighter than when you began.

Is it Negative Behavior or ADHD Sensory Overload? An Educator’s Quick Reference

Brain Bits, , , , , , , , , , , ,

How many times have students been pigeon-holed into the category of displaying bad or negative behavior when opposing class work or during transitions from a state of play or break back to the classroom and vice versa?

When the body appears like this during an overt meltdown:

What May Look Like This May Actually Not Be...
What May Look Like This May Actually Not Be…

The Brain Actually looks like this:

The Amygdala and Hypothalamus Fired Up in Fight or Flight State
The Amygdala and Hypothalamus Fired Up in Fight or Flight State

The Emotional Brain that is highlighted are two specific parts of the limbic system, the amygdala and the hypothalamus. The amygdala controls the brain’s ability to coordinate many responses to emotional stimuli, including endocrine, autonomic, and behavioral responses. Stress, anxiety, and fear are primary stimuli that produce responses. Mediation by the amygdala allows control among the stimuli.

The hypothalamus plays a significant role in the endocrine system and are effected by the amygdala. It is responsible for maintaining your body’s internal balance, which is known as homeostasis. This includes the  heart rate, blood pressure, fluid and electrolyte balance, appetite, sleep cycles and is the key connector between the endocrine system (glands and hormones) and the nervous system.

Now we are painting this picture of the brain developing at a functionally optimal manner; without aberrations from either genetic means or environmental factors. However, when faced with students who have underlying imaging differences in brain imaging due to the said factors and manifest a type of negative behavior that can easily be mistaken and categorized as a regular tantrum, the subtle elevations in amygdala and hypothalamic responses are now pushed to abnormally erratic levels in these brains.

For example, take the Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Brain in comparison to the Normal Brain:

We see clearly that the shape alone of the cerebrum of the ADHD brain is not elongated or similar to a normal brain’s saddle

Imaging of the Normal Brain in Contrast to the ADHD brain
Imaging of the Normal Brain in Contrast to the ADHD brain

type shape. It is oblong and with heavy concentration on temporal and occipital real estate versus the butterfly formation of the normal brain. What is also fascinating is the corpus callosum (where part of the amygdala and hypothalamus are housed) is lighter in the ADHD brain. What that means is that there is no clear path of communication between both hemispheres as compared to that of a normal brain. The blues indicate calm sections of the brains and the greens are considered to be the brain in an even keeled state, balanced and not in fight-flight mode.

Here’s also an image of a person with and without ADHD medication:

Brain Chemical Responses with Adderall Versus Without Adderall
Brain Chemical Responses with Adderall Versus Without Adderall

With Adderall, the brain is utilized in full functional capacity, the chemical connections between neurotransmitters is efficient and there are little if any underutilized processing areas. When Adderall is wearing off, the results are unimaginable: the only sections  of the brain that have any residual function left are the orbitofrontal area of the Pre Frontal Cortex (responsible for sensory integration and some decision making), and spotty areas across the 4 lobes. What is fascinating to mention here is the loss of Adderall effects are from back to front of the cerebrum.

These images provide a very clear picture of the typical versus atypical brain, especially the differences between one with ADHD and one without.   If ony it were that easy as a classroom teacher to distinguish a student with ADHD from a student with  sensory overload.  The list below is not as ‘yellow’ and ‘red’ as the brains above, but hopefully it will provide clarity and a concrete direction for you to take in order to best meet the needs of your students.

First, it crucial to note that boys and girls with ADHD display different symptoms; therefore, they are distinguished below.  Second, students with meltdowns as a result of negative behavior, will most likely present with similar symptoms; therefore, it is an undertaking for teachers to take quantitative data on the targeted behaviors. Forms like the one below:

TRUE ABC Chart For Objective DATA Collection
TRUE ABC Chart For Objective 5 Session DATA Collection (click for printable image)

BOYS

  • Fidgety while sitting
  • Talk nonstop
  • Constant motion, may include touching items in their path
  • Difficulty sitting still
  • extreme impatience
  • Always “bored”
  • Lack verbal filter
    Sensory Overload or Negative Behavior?
  • Interrupt others’

GIRLS

  • Spacey
  • Unfocused
  • Inattentive
  • Trouble with organization
  • Forget directions
  • Forget or incomplete homework
  • Lose or misplace papers, books, personal belongings
  • Much Less Likely
    • hyperactive
    • impulsive

For students with ADHD, these symptoms as well as sensory overload meltdowns will be manifested consistently throughout the day across environments, unless the student is highly engaged in a preferred activity. Students presenting with negative behaviors will have meltdowns at specific yet intermittent periods of the day or throughout the day as will be shown in the ABC Chart above. For example, when the medication is wearing off, one may see a spike in ADHD symptoms in any combination. Once you can answer when, where, how long and make valid hypotheses as to why students are displaying the behaviors below, you should be able to have a pretty strong understanding as to whether your student is having a meltdown because of learned negative behaviors or as a result of having an ADHD brain on sensory overload.