Читать книгу Women With Attention Deficit Disorder: Embrace Your Differences and Transform Your Life - Sari Boone's Solden - Страница 17

The brain uses multiple chemical substances called neurotransmitters to act as messengers, sending information to and from the different parts of your brain. Three neurotransmitters that have been linked to behavioral and emotional conditions are Dopamine, Serotonin, and Norepinephrine. While low levels of Serotonin are linked with clinical depression, AD/HD appears related to the other two neurotransmitters, Dopamine and Norepinephrine. Most people agree that AD/HD symptoms are connected to the inefficiency and inconsistency of this chemical information transmission system in the brain. The brain itself is fine. There is no damage, and actually people with AD/HD are often quite bright or creative. It is just that for some reason these chemical messengers are not firing consistently or efficiently. It’s logical that if the regulators aren’t firing properly in the part of your brain that regulates attention, activity level, and impulsivity that these areas of behavior would also be inconsistent.

In his 2004 article on the basics of the neurobiology of AD/HD, Terry Dickson, M.D., an expert in the field, likens the difficulty of communicating inefficiently across nerve synapses in the brain to talking on a cell phone with bad reception. I liken this neurotransmitter inconsistency to problems you may experience with your computer. Even if you have the most expensive, well-built computer with the ability to process and store great amounts of information, your desktop can get too full, or something can go wrong with the operating system. Or your computer could have great long-term information storage capability but inadequate operating capability to match. Those of us who use computers have all experienced the frustration when an error message suddenly appears without warning—the screen freezes, and the system crashes. In a sense, this is what AD/HD is like; not being able to use the potential of the fine tool that is there.

The inefficient and irregular transmission of information in the brain causes a host of unique difficulties in each person affected. The huge number of variations and limitless possibilities of combinations that exist in these chemical connections makes what we now call AD/HD so confusing to understand. It’s hard for many to accept, especially because the symptoms manifest so differently in each person. AD/HD even looks different in the same person at various times.