All Sressed Out

The last week of classes is upon me. I have less than seven days until my final exams, and the stress is beginning to rise much like this early-summer Rochester heat. On a given day, I have no less than twenty dozen separate things on my mind. Okay, so maybe twenty dozen is a bit much, but I do have a lot on my mind. This week, for example, I had an Electromagnetic Fields project due on Monday, and both a lab, and a test in the same class on Wednesday.  I had a Linear Systems quiz on Thursday, an Electronics lab on Wednesday, two previous lab reports due, and on top of all that my drivers licence expires in less than a week. Phew.

Having this much on my mind makes it hard to concentrate and pay attention in class, which is a big problem considering this is the most important time of the quarter. With finals fast approaching, I need to be like a sponge and soak up any detail that might help me on a final exam. 

A study published in The Journal of Neuroscience sheds some light on the reasons why stressed individuals find it so hard to pay attention. The key lies in the effect stress has on neurons in two different areas of the brain. Prolonged exposure to stress leads to decreased performance in tasks that require attention and the ability to shift focus, as well as the ability to learn and unlearn new material. 

The actual experimentation in the study was performed on rats. The rat-stress was produced by keeping the rodents in painless restraints for six hours a day. After three weeks, the researchers used a series of tests which measured how quickly the rats learned to make associations between different "cues" and the location of food. A Rockefeller University report on the study outlines the different tests as follows:

"First, the researchers provided two different materials for the rats to dig in, such as sand and sawdust, and buried food consistently under only one. Next, food was left in the same material, but it was scented with strong spices (like cumin or nutmeg) that were unrelated to the foods location. Then food was buried according to scent, teaching the rats to use odor as the location cue - in other words, it could be buried in either sawdust or sand, as long as it smelled like cumin. Finally, the scent cues were flip-flopped, so that the rats had to unlearn the prior scent association and remember a new one."

The study ultimately concluded that stressed and non-stressed rats performed the same on all of the tests but the last one, in which they had to unlearn an old behavior, and learn a new one. The medical reason for this is that neurons in the medial prefrontal cortex were shortened by the extended exposure to stress.

This is a scary finding, because it points to the fact that prolonged exposure to high stress can actually physically alter the make-up of your brain. 

The value of a study such as this is that it brings to light that being exposed to stress for prolonged periods does more than make you frazzled. It actually affects your attention, and your ability to learn and unlearn information. This is specifically alarming for a college student such as myself, in the middle of my last week of classes before exams when learning takes on a new importance. 

Taking steps to reduce your stress can lead to the disappearance of these symptoms, so the best course of action is to take a page from the playbook of 80's pop band Frankie Goes to Hollywood and "relax."

Baby Eintsteins

While flipping through the stations on a Tuesday afternoon, I found my way to Nick Jr. My channel surfing was halted by a combination of vibrant colors, giant hairy puppets, and repetitive music. "Who in their right mind would let their kids watch this garbage?" I thought to myself as a combination of the giant hairy puppets sang a song about "a party in their tummy." This got me to thinking about the effects of television on the attention spans of developing children. There are even television shows which are specifically crated to make your baby smarter, such as the "Brainy Baby" and "Baby Einstein" series'.

The "Brainy Baby" video series includes titles such as "Right Brain," "Left Brain," and "Bilingual Baby." Many parents hope that by plopping their kids in front of one of these cinematic experiences will sharpen the mind of their child. However, a study from the University of Washington found that exposing children to these videos actually did the opposite.

Yes, that's right. "Baby Einstein" and "Brainy Baby" actually had negative effects among those tested. The study explains that in a group of about six hundred babies, "for every hour a day that babies eight to sixteen months old were shown such popular series as 'Brainy Baby' or 'Baby Einstein,' they knew six to eight fewer words than other children."

Using in the hopes of making your baby smarter, actually had adverse effects to their vocabulary. This makes sense when you consider that the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that children less than two years old should watch no TV at all.

The study notes that the videos are "designed to engage a baby's attention, hop from scene to scene with minimal dialogue and include mesmerizing images, like a lava lamp." So while your child may look like they are in the midst of deep thought while pondering the minutia of their children's programming, they are only attracted to the visuals much like mosquitoes to a bug-zapper.

What actually does improve the intelligence of your baby is interaction. Reading to children and telling them stories provides many more benefits than plopping them in front of the boob tube. The AAP states that reading aloud to your children helps shape the architecture of their developing brains. It is also noted that "Repetitive use of cognitive skills associated with reading aloud, ensure that associated brain connections persist.

So please, keep your kids away from the TV. Just because there is a multitude of programs on television catered towards children, doesn't mean they should be watched. 

Nuturing Attention in the Womb

If a pregnant mother uses drugs or alcohol during pregnancy, there is a significant chance that the unborn child which she is carrying will develop problems, including drug addiction and Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Obviously, what a pregnant mother ingests - or doesn't -  during pregnancy can have a profound effect on her child. But is there anything an expecting mother can do to increase the attention span of her child?

According to a study by the National Center for Biotechnology Information, the answer is yes - with a catch.

The NCBI study focused on young mothers aged 14-24, who do not ingest the recommended amount of iron can see significant benefits in their children's attention span when given a regimen of appropriate iron supplements.

According to the study,"tests of short-term memory and attention span were assessed at entry and conclusion of the one-month treatment period. The experimental group showed significant improvement on the most sensitive measure of short-term memory and three subtests."

For portions of the population who are at-risk for low iron levels, it is important that the proper amount of iron be ingested during pregnancy. These tests, while not done over a broad demographic, still stress the importance of iron in the diet of a pregnant mother. This study also may help provide an explanation for adolescents who may suffer from attention disorders. One possible cause may be a lack of iron in the mother's diet during pregnancy. This is clearly not the only explanation for short attention span in children, but it is another piece to the puzzle.

Music and Your Brain

When I was in kindergarten my Mom signed me up for a class at the community music center called KinderMuisc. The class ran every Wednesday and was led by Ms. Thompson, who was a music teacher at one of the local elementary schools. Every week I got to try out a different instrument, and at the conclusion of the summer-long program, I got to decide which one I liked the best. I chose the drums, and my Mom signed me up for drum lessons shortly after my KinderMusic days were behind me. In retrospect, my Mom was very brave, encouraging an aspiring six-year-old drummer at the cost of peace and quiet in her own home.

My first drum lesson was at Joe's Drum Shop with a teacher named Joel. When I walked in, I was led down the stairs in the back of the store to a studio with blue foam egg-crate lining the walls. Crammed in the corner was a jet black drum set, and as soon as I laid my beady little eyes on it, I practically started to salivate. I instinctively moved closer to the black drum stool, but was halted by Joel.

"Hey pal! We're going to start out over here on the drum pad today."

Joel grabbed my shoulders and aimed my body at a pair of grey, round drum pads, that looked like glorified dinner plates.

"At the beginning of every lesson, we're going to start out on the pad. We'll work on stick control, sight reading, and rudiments. Then, at the end of the lesson, we'll switch over to the drum set. Think of the drum set as dessert."

And so it went for twelve years until I graduated high school, and even to today here at RIT where I play drums in the RIT Jazz Ensemble. Over the years various music teachers would always be citing statistics which showed that kids who were involved in music did better in school, and that practicing an instrument would lead to a better attention span.

But can merely listening to music improve your attention span? A study from the Stanford School of Medicine suggests just that. The research team used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to monitor brain activity in subjects while they listened to symphonies by an obscure composer from the eighteenth century. The focus of the study was to observe what happens in the brain of a listener in the moments leading up to, during, and after the short silences between movements of the symphony.

"The study suggests one possible adaptive evolutionary purpose of music," explains the study's co-author Jonathan Berger, PhD. Music engages the brain over a period of time, and the process of listening to music could be a way that the brain sharpens its ability to anticipate, and improves its ability to sustain attention.

If this study is accurate, you could think of classical pieces with multiple movements like exercises for your brain. The anticipation associated with the silence between movements could potentially extend your ability to pay attention in other situation.

So the next time you are in your car and searching for a radio station, tune your dial to the classical music station. It might have actual neurological benefits!

(Below is an example of an fMRI scan)

Mini-Wheats to the Rescue

What if improving your attention span was as easy as eating a certain kind of breakfast cereal? Well, according to Kellogg, the makers of Frosted Mini-Wheats cereal, it really is that simple! In a recent advertisement, they claim that kids who ate Mini-Wheats saw their attentiveness increase twenty percent.

The only problem with that claim, is that its almost completely false. According to the Federal Trade Commission, only about one in nine children saw a twenty percent increase in attentiveness. In addition, the study that Kellogg performed was comparing kids eating Mini-Wheats to kids who weren't eating anything for breakfast at all. This is far less impressive and downright misleading, which is why the FTC brought charges against the Kellogg company and it's misleading bit of advertisement.

"We tell consumers that they should deal with trusted national brands," saya FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz. "So it's especially important that America'sleading companies are more 'attentive' to the truthfulness of their ads and don't exaggerate the resultsof tests or research."

This case made me think about my own morning eating habits. More specifically, it made me realize that I usually eat nothing at all in the morning. Could improving my attention span be as simple as eating breakfast? According to the National Institutes of Health, "by eating breakfast you can increase your attention span and memory, have more energy, and feel less irritable and restless."

I can't remember a time where I actually enjoyed breakfast. My mom used to wake me up in the morning before school, and sit me at the kitchen table in front of a bowl of cereal. Sometimes it was Honey Nut Cheerios, and sometimes it was Fruity Pebbles, but every time I hated it. It wasn't the taste of the cereal which I disliked, in fact it all tasted quite good. I was simply never hungry in the morning, and being forced to eat a bowl of food when you aren't hungry is not a pleasant experience.

Now, years later, I still don't find myself hungry in the morning. However, I think it may be time to do the mature thing, and to start eating breakfast. Weather it be fruit, a pop tart or two, or the old standby of breakfast cereal, the benefits may certainly outweigh the unpleasantness. After all, I have nothing to lose, and only more attention span to gain!

"Instant Attention!....

...Just Add Acetylcholine!"

A lot has been said in my previous posts about the medical reasons behind the typically short human attention span. Most of the studies I have found trace the origins of attention back to the brain. This makes sense considering the brain is the organ of the body which controls practically everything you do, from breathing, to sleeping, to picking what clothes you want to wear in the morning. While most studies agree that the brain controls what you pay attention to, none have made such specific claims as new research recently published in the scientific journal Nature. 

In an article titled "Acetylcholine Contributes Through Muscarinic Receptors to Attention Modulation V1," researchers from Newcastle University present convincing evidence that in order to pay attention to something, a specific chemical within the brain must first be released. 

"We all know that in life we sometimes are not paying attention to tasks or the world around us. Our research shows that to have full attention and awareness the neurons and specific receptors in the brain require a dose of acetylcholine to get them into the correct state. When this happens correctly the brain has higher levels of attention and has increased awareness of the task an individual is attempting to solve" explains research leader Alex Thiele.

The Newcastle team tested their theories about the natural neurotransmitter acetylcholine by organizing an experiment using monkeys. The team presented a monkey with a task, first with no additional acetylcholine administered, to act as a control. Then, the monkey was presented with the same task, but was given a dose of the neurotransmitter just before. The team observed that the areas of the brain that correspond with awareness and attentiveness were more responsive than in the control case. Finally, a monkey was presented with the same task, but the neurotransmitter was blocked within the brain. A visible reduction in activity in the same areas of the brain which were enhanced with extra acetylcholine was observed.

The next step for the team is more testing and research to further hone in on the effects and possibilities of this chemical as it relates to human attention span. This could lead to potential breakthroughs in treatment of neurological disorders which are associated with lack of attention and awareness. 

"If these mechanisms are not working properly then, most of the time, it means we have to re-read an article or we will miss something somebody says. Many of these processes in the brain have a role in conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, attention deficit disorders and other attention deficits. It will require more research but I hope that this work might be able to help sufferers in the future," notes Thiele.

This is surely promising research, and I am excited personally by the hope it brings towards finding a cure for Alzheimer's, which I have experienced within my family. However, I will reserve my judgement about the value of the research for two reasons.

My first skepticism is in the actual research. This was a reputable study carried out by professional scientists, and published in a widely distributed and highly regarded scientific journal. I have no doubt they followed the scientific method to a "T." What I do doubt, however, are the methods by which these researchers quantify "the amount of attention" a test subject was showing towards a task.

Certain areas of the brain may show more activity, but there is no concrete way of knowing if this increased activity corresponds to increased attention without asking the test subject. The problem here is that human testing is not practical at this point early in the research, and no matter how cool it would be, we can't talk to monkeys to see how they're feeling.

My second reason for questioning this research is not one of science, but one of morality. Surely no one can argue that curing Alzheimer's disease would be a clear-cut "win" for society. However if this research eventually led to the development of a pill which released controlled amounts of acetylcholine into the brain to increase and enhance attention span, there is no doubt it would be over-prescribed by doctors who are currently over-diagnosing children with attention deficit and related disorders. I would not be morally comfortable knowing that a pill existed which offered "instant attention" because it could potentially alter the personalities of those who were prescribed the medication. I think there still should be more value placed in the ability of a person - child or adult - to overcome a lack of attention span by hard work and perseverance. Surely there are some who would qualify medically for the new medication, much like there are many people today who truly do suffer from ADD and do benefit from medications such as Ritalin. But it is undeniable that in today's society, a quick fix pill that may seem too good to be true, probably is.

Who wants to know?

Before I began writing this blog, I asked myself a simple question: Why do I care so much about my own attention span?

I came up with three reasons. The first is that I would like to be able to pay more attention in school. Paying closer attention would in all likelyhood lead to better understanding, and most likely better grades too. My GPA certainly could use all the help it can get. 

Secondly, I'd like to be able to stop procrastinating. This applies to more than just homework. By putting off schoolwork, errands, and even laundry, I feel stressed out and rushed from time to time. Removing this stress would add to my overall quality of life.

The third and final motivation for learning about my attention span is that I would like to learn how to use my time more efficiently. This would leave me with more time to do leisurely things, like reading for pleasure or going to the gym more often.

However, you would be surprised at the amount of special interest groups who have a vested interest in knowing as much as possible about the human attention span. 

One of these groups is advertisers and marketing firms.  In a piece about how neuroscience helps marketing employees judge the effectiveness of their ads, Kim Masters of National Public Radio pays a visit to a company called NeuroFocus. NeuroFocus studies the response of the brain to commercials and advertisements to learn about how effective they are at grabbing the attention of the consumer. As a part of her segment, Masters visited the company and was attached to equipment which reads activity within the brain, while being shown a series of commercials.  "The results are supposed to show three things" Masters explains. "Whether I'm paying attention, whether I am emotionally engaged, and wheatear I am likely to remember what I am seeing."

Results from studies like this performed on hundreds of participants are valuable to advertisers because this data doesn't lie. Often times, ads are tested with focus groups. Marketers have found that sometimes members of these focus groups might not always be truthful, and often censor themselves. The drawback to this type of neurological data is that simply reading someone's brainwaves off of a screen cannot tell you how something makes them feel. It may be able to tell you if they are paying attention, or that they are emotionally engaged, but the actual feelings caused by the tested advertisements are not captured within the data.

If the work being done by NeuroFocus leads to progress in understanding why so many people today have such short attention spans, then the public will benefit in twofold. First, we can begin to address the reasons for our short focus. But more importantly, advertisers will be able to come up with commercials less annoying than this one.

You can hear Kim Masters' piece HERE.

Continuous Partial Attention

I am writing this post on the third floor of the RIT Wallace Library. The third floor has been dubbed a "quiet floor" where talking and noise is discouraged so other inhabitants of the space will not be distracted from whatever task they may be attempting to complete. The sea-green carpet helps muffle what faint talking may be heard from my seat, and the sunlight outside the windows is obstructed by black mesh pull-down shades. 

I consistently get much more work done here on the third floor than I do at home in my apartment. It isn't a surprising fact when you consider all of the distractions at home, which are removed at the library. The three guys I live with aren't around to interrupt, or blast music from their rooms, or clang together pots and pans while they attempt to cook a meal (and by "cook a meal" I mean "boil water for Ramen") When I come to the library to work, I'm not trying to do more than one task. I am focused on one thing: get my work done. I'm not listening to music while I write, or talking on the phone while I try to solve a calculus problem.

So why then, is it so hard to give my full attention to something in a normal environment? If I can be productive in the library, why can't I do the same in my apartment, or even in a classroom for that matter? The answer is something called continuous partial attention (CPA). In an article in Businessweek, Linda Stone offers some information on what continuous partial attention is, and why it is becoming more common in society.

"We're motivated by a desire not to miss anything" she explains. "There's a kind of vigilance that is not characteristic of multi-tasking. With continuous partial attention, we feel most alive when we're connected, plugged in and in the know. We constantly scan for opportunities - activities or people - in any given moment."

Continuous partial attention is the red-headed step-child of multi-tasking. They are related, but are far from the same. The core difference between CPA and multi-tasking lies in motivation. Most people multi-task in an effort to be more productive, while continuous partial attention is driven by that fear of missing something. Think of how many times a day you check your email, or look at your cell phone for missed calls or text messages. It is most likely an absurd number of times, which in all actuality isn't necessary. 

CPA is motivated by a desire to be connected, weather it be to the internet, the phone, instant message, text message, email, or chat. These connections do little to boost productivity, even though it might seem that they would. Being connected and continuously available by all of the means mentioned above only serves to distract an individual from a task, and does not enhance their performance or productivity.

I wanted to learn more about continuous partial attention, so I did some digging and came across a podcast in which Linda Stone speaks at length about the subject. Within her talk, Stone points out that CPA can lead to some serious side effects including over-stimulation and excess stress. Being so "plugged in" as a generation, with cell phones at our hips and laptops at our sides, has lead us to be more fearful and worried than we would be without these distractions. 

According to Stone, "continuous partial attention and the fight or flight response associated with it sets off a cascade of stress hormones, starting with norepinephrine and its companion, cortisol. As a hormone, cortisol is a universal donor. It can attach to any receptor site. As a result, dopamine and serotonin, the hormones that help us feel calm and happy, have nowhere to go because cortisol has taken up the available spaces."

Yikes.

I knew that doing work in the library, where there are minimal distractions, was helping my productivity, but I had no idea it could be helping me be less stressed as well.

To listen to Linda Stone's speech on CPA, go HERE.

Can You Hear Me Now?

I am willing to bet you twenty dollars that you can count the number of people who you know that don't have cell phones on a single hand. A Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article says that the number of cell phone users in the United States has increased from 34 million ten years ago, to 203 million today. With cell phones quickly becoming a "necessity" to some, or a "necessary evil" to others, it is no surprise that they have found their way into the classroom. Yet another agent for disruption and distraction is here, and according to the statistics, the cell phone is here to stay.


I have broken down cell phone disruptions into three common categories:


1. The texting neighbor - In the process of taking notes in class, you notice a glare in the corner of your eye. The source is the glow of the cellphone that belongs to the kid sitting next to you. He attempts to hold it below his desk so the professor won't notice his transgression, but it is blatantly obvious that he is not paying attention. He is staring at his phone so hard that he is practically burning a hole in the display. The subtle clicking of the number pad, accompanied with the fluourescent glow of the LCD display are more than enough to distract you from the notes which you are trying to take. The texting neighbor has a limited range of disruption, usually limited to the people sitting on either side of the perpetrator.



2. The vibrating pocket - Whats that pleasant buzzing feeling in your pocket? No, its not some sort of adult toy, its your cellphone. Your mind is jarred from the task at hand when you recieve an unexpected call and your pocket turns into a holster for a phone-sized jumping-bean. Your hand instinctively dives into your pocket in an effort to squelch the vibration as rapidly as possible. In the heat of the moment, you hang up on whoever was trying to call. You switch your phone to silent, and place it back in your pocket as you try to catch up to the rest of the class.


3. The unexpected ring - Compared to the previous two categories, the unexpeted ring is an infrequent occurance. However, it is a weapon of mass disruption. While minding your own business, your ears sharpen at the sound of an unfamiliar ringtone, muffled by the fabric of a pocket, backpack, or purse. A moment of panic sweeps across the class as everyone checks to make sure that their phone is not the source of the disruption. The panic subsides for all but one, the perpetrator, who now quickly ruffles through his or her backpack to find the source of the ring and to terminate it at all costs. An awkard and sheepish apology is surely soon to follow. Following the incident, everyone in the class retrieves their phone from its unique resting place to make sure that it is set to silent.


Technology is both our friend, and our enemy. In these cases, the cell phone shows its mischevious side. The major appeal of a cell phone may be to be available at any time, but in these class scenarios, that is also what makes the cell phone such a frustrating piece of technology. But hey, you know what they say : "Can't live with it, can't live without it."

Magnetron!

I share a room with another RIT student whose name is Bobby Brown. Bobby is studying microelectronic engineering, and is in the process of growing a pretty awesome beard. He has short hair the color of black shoe-polish, and round gold-rimmed glasses. When I run into Bobby around campus, I usually hear him before I see him.

"Hey Evan! Evan! Over Here!!" he shouts, while waving his arm enthusiastically from his shoulder all the way through the tip of his fingers. If Bobby spots you from across a room, hallway, or even across a parking lot, he makes sure you know that he sees you right then and there.

I told Bobby about this blog and explained that I was going to be posting some doodles from my classnotes and talking about attention span. Yesterday he stormed into our room and proclaimed "I have an AMAZING doodle for your blog-thingy!"

He pulled out a three-subject notebook and flipped through the pages until he found the one he was looking for. "Behold, the Magnetron!" he announced, as he showed me this:

When I asked Bobby about the origins of his Magnetron doodle, he said it was a case of word association.

"I was sitting in my Thin Films class, and my professor was talking about ways to create sputtering systems. He said one way was to use a magnetron. Immediately I thought to myself 'Magnetron?! That sounds like some sort of awesome robot!' I spent the next five minutes of class completing my masterpiece and not paying attention."

It really is a great sketch. It looks like some sort of rejected misfit Pokemon.

Before Bobby explained what caused him to lose focus in his class, I hadn't thought of word association as a possible cause for a lapse in attention. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, word association can reveal information about a persons subconscious thoughts. Perhaps the association that Bobby saw with the word Magnetron and robots was so strong it pulled him away from his class.

Or perhaps Bobby just thinks about robots far too much. For those of you who are interested, a real magnetron is pictured below.

Go HERE for more information on magnetrons.

Why Today?

Every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday for the past seven weeks, I have woken up at approximately 8:30 AM in order to make it to my 9:00 AM Electromagnetic Fields class on time. My alarm clock is set for 8:12 AM, allowing for two satisfying whacks of the snooze button before I must officially wake up for the day. Since I shower before I go to bed at night, my morning routine consists of getting dressed and grabbing a pop-tart (preferably strawberry, with frosting) before snatching my backpack from the foot of my bed and heading out my apartment door on my way to class. 

After climbing three stories to the top floor of RIT's Kate Gleason building, I make my way to room 3149, and claim my seat. I habitually slouch into the fifth seat on the right, in the second row from the front of the class. Lucky for me, the hard blue plastic seats are just rigid enough to prevent me from drifting back to sleep in the middle of my fifty minute lecture. 

Surprisingly, I don't often find myself distracted or tired in this class, despite it being my earliest class of the quarter. A lot of this has to do with my professor, since she presents difficult and bland material, like "the magnitudes of complex reflection coefficients in matched transmission lines," in a way that keeps my attention. She uses a good mix of step-by-step variation and worked out examples which thankfully keep me from zoning out.

Last Tuesday, while in Electromagnetic Fields, I lost all concentration. My professor had started a new topic, dealing with the input impedance in a transmission line. I took down about a half-page of actual notes, before I found myself drawing this: 

What made me drift into doodles on this day, but not any other? I did some research, and come up with two separate answers. The first explanation is a lack of sleep. According to Kathleen Nadeau, Ph.D and Director of the Chesapeake ADHD Center of Maryland, simply one night of inadequate rest can "give you symptoms that resemble ADHD (attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder), such as forgetfulness and difficulty maintaining concentration."

The second possible cause of my drifting attention that day has to do with the material being presented. As I noted before, my professor was beginning a new topic, and was presenting a lot of theory. She kept writing what seemed like an endless stream of formulas on the whiteboard without stopping to summarize or to do a numerical example. Since the lecture failed to switch gears to an example, or some other way of presenting the material other than flatly lecturing on generic formulas, my attention wandered.

Perhaps a combination of the bland theoretical material, and a lack of a good night's sleep prior to the lecture led me to doodling that morning, or maybe I just felt like drawing a dinosaur. Either way, the potential causes for this lapse in attention are worth taking note of. Maybe acknowledging these things will help to keep me from drifting off in class as often as I do.....or maybe it will just make my doodles that much more interesting!

Quote courtesy of CNN.

Do I Have ADD?

When I was a young child I was, in a word, a spaz. I learned last year that my brother used to sneak up on me with our family camcorder and record me while I danced to Michael Jackson songs and talked to myself. I rarely stayed in one place for more than three minutes, and used to fidget constantly. Unfortunately, my parents have the videos to prove it.

Since then, I have grown up quite a bit. I have a beard now instead of a six-inch rat-tail, and have contacts instead of glasses. One thing I haven't grown out of is being a spaz. I routinely make incoherent noises just to fill those awkward silences in the car with my friends. I don't hesitate to break out with a completely goofy dance when a weird song comes on the radio either. But do these things, in addition to my short attention span in class, point towards a medical disorder?

When people think of attention span, most immediately think of Attention Defecit Disorder, or ADD. In recent years the number of children who have been diagnosed with ADD has risen sharply. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 4.5 million American children between the ages of five and seventeen have been diagnosed with the disorder since 2006. Thats up from only 500,000 in 1985. Was I one of these 4.5 million?

If my Mom had taken me to a doctor and described my behavior as a problem, would I have been diagnosed with ADD? It is impossible to know, but I am very glad that this didn't happen. I believe that the types of psychostimulants prescribed to treat ADD, while effective in many children with legitimate hyperactivity disorders, fundamentally cahnge a person's personality. This is the main reason why it is so disturbing that the criteria for diagnosis of this disorder are so vague.

Let's take a look at some common symptoms courtesy of the National Institutes of Mental Health.

• "Impulsiveness: someone who acts quickly without thinking first.

• Hyperactivity: someone who can't sit still, walks, runs, or climbs around when others are seated, talks when others are talking.

• Inattention: someone who daydreams or seems to be in another world, is sidetracked by what is going on around him or her."

According to the above description, I am in the clear. I don't act without thinking, and can remain in my seat for hours at a time. Occasionally my mind wanders in class, resulting in doodles or daydreams, but I still manage to take notes and come away from class with a good understanding of the material presented.

But does this description really outline a true mental disease? Much of the criteria for diagnosing ADD seems subjective. This could potentially be dangerous. Imagine if the criteria for diagnosing a brain tumor were similarly vague and subjective.

• If a growth on the brain seems to be abnormal, or resembles a walnut, the growth may be a tumor

• A greenish-yellow color usually indicates a malignant tumor, while a blueish-green color may indicate a benign tumor

These criteria for diagnosis are so vague, that a real risk of misdiagnosis presents itself. Medications used to treat ADD, such as Ritalin and Adderall are powerful psychostimulants which can be addictive and have side effects such as siezures, strokes, and heart-attacks. Placing someone who is does not truly have ADD could lead to serious troubles, including the abuse of their medications.

Perhaps ADD isn't a true disease at all, merely a fabrication of modern society in an effort to compartmentalize today's kids into categories of "normal" or "disruptive."

"In The Myth of the ADD Child, Thomas Armstrong, Ph.D. disavows the existence of ADD as a disparate medical condition. He refers to the fact that child can be distractible and hyperactive because he's bored, anxious, depressed, allergic, because his temperament is conflict with his environment, because he's been hyper-stimulated by the media, or for any number of other different reasons. He indicates the negative effect that the label ADD has on the way people view children. He states that it causes people to see the disorder and not the child. As a result the child is treated as if he were the disorder, and not the vibrant individual he really is. " - Quote from The Autism and ADD Epidemics: Just a Case of Misdiagnosis by Jennifer Claerr

Whatever the case, I'm convinced my lapses of concentration in class aren't caused by ADD. Hopefully I can dig up some more information regarding what affects the attention span of adolescents like myself in an effort to shine some light on this common problem. Even though I was a spaz as a kid (and still am today) that does not automatically mean I have ADD.

A Hint of Whats To Come

This isn't really a legitimate post, but I would like to share some class doodles from other people that I found by scouring Google Images. I am in the process of getting my personal doodles scanned, and will begin writing about them shortly. For now, enjoy this taste of what is to come.

Hello World

Welcome to my blog, "Must...Pay...Attention...!" Within this space, I aim to chronicle what happens when the attention span of a twenty-something college student runs out during class.

Attention spans are reducing over time, and with the evolution of the internet in recent decades, the attention span of my generation is shorter than any of those before it. A 2008 study performed by British sociologist David Moxon indicates that the average human attention span is 5 minutes and 7 seconds, which has decreased from the nearly 12 minute attention span of humans 10 years ago. Studies also show that the attention span for students in a 50 minute lecture tops out at around 18 minutes, before most students lose complete focus.

As a college student myself, I feel the pull of a short attention span every day. This usually results in countless doodles and drawings in my class notes. Some of them directly convey frustration with course material, or a distate for the professor, while others seem to have no connection at all to the material being presented at the time. My blog will focus on the products of this short attention span. I will display images and insights from my own notes, as well as those of close friends, and will encourage readers to send in their own doodles. Hopefully this blog will offer an insight into what happens in the mind of a college student when it wavers from its primary objective of paying attention in class and absorbing the lecture material being presented by the professor.