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UAB researchers found abnormalities related to motivation
or disorder in children.

W hen children atenciónehiperactividad deficit disorder (ADHD) manage to spend hours giving the thumbs to your Nintendo
and are instead unable to complete a survey with ten problems, adults tend to flake.
Is it only inattentive with mates, with work, with homework? The key to understanding this disparity does not seem to be in the will or rude, but in the confines of the brain.

More specifically in the nucleus accumbens, an essential part of the ventral striatum, the region of the brain associated with pleasure and reward. Is ultimately a matter of dopamine.
This nucleus is located deep in the brain is altered in children with ADHD. This has been demonstrated researchers at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and the Vall d'Hebron.

"Through nuclear magnetic resonance to 42 children between 6 and 18 with ADHD, and 42 of the same age and sex and no anomaly cognitivaode behavior, we found that the volume of this region, the ventral striatum, is reduced in those with ADHD, "explains Sussanna Carmona, a researcher at the Cognitive Neuroscience Unit at the UAB (IAPS-Hospital del Mar). Traditionally it was thought that ADHD was only a cognitive impairment, affecting only the proper attention.

Now it is confirmed that there are problems to sustain this focus by alterations in the process of motivation and that is the reason that those with this disorder improve their attention when the stimulus is consola.La inmediato.Como with motivation. "To do anything we need to be motivated, it has to activate the circuit," says the researcher.

The second step is to have the cognitive capacity to do so, and the third motor ability. But if missing the first, the rest can not be placed in small doses marcha.Dopamina. "When we have to study today to achieve a pass in June, our reward circuits must have a certain level of dopamine to be released in small doses every few years: so long we keep the motivation ADHD plazo.Con this function is impaired and seems, at least part of the time, that this release does not occur at small doses of dopamine, so there is no long-term motivation. What about education? "Modula, of course, but we're talking about a state that has or has not. For this reason, the finding may have implications on how to teach and educate these children," keep an eye may depend on knowing how to give immediate compensation " says Susanna Carmona.

Two deficits. "If you can keep the focus on his game console and not on other activities, it is possible that your problem is not attentional itself, but alterations in the process of strengthening in the reward system," said Dr. Carmona . "We believe in elTDAHconviven the twin deficits." Moreover, in the children studied, the more reduced the ventral striatum showed more hyperactivity and impulsivity was detected. The reward system also exists in other living beings. For example, rats, animals that have helped to meet these depths cerebrales.Este circuit involved, for example, addiction to snuff: "With a cigar, the region that encodes the motivation is very much active," says researcher UAB. The work, which involved the Unit
Cognitive Neuroscience of the UAB (IAPS-Hospital del Mar) and clinical investigators of the Vall d'Hebron, has been
published in Biol Psychiatry.co attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Inside the cerebro.Imagen made from 3D magnetic resonance:
red, the nucleus accumbens measured in children with ADHD.