Dr. Kieran Kennedy

Yep, love that one.

Basically, you know, we could definitely talk for an hour about that, but I might put you to sleep, I promise I won't.

I guess in a nutshell, we know with ADHD, from that point of birth, really, someone's brain is developing just slightly different when they have ADHD compared to someone who doesn't.

And that's the crux of a neurodevelopmental disorder.

And so in ADHD, we know that there are pathways and circuits in the brain that just function a little bit differently in terms of dopamine, neurochemical levels, stimulation levels, compared to someone who doesn't have ADHD.

And a lot of that is to do with the prefrontal cortex and the frontal lobe, which people might have heard about.

That's really involved in a lot of our

attentional, motivation, memory, personality-based aspects.

And so it's those connections and circuits in particular that we know just work slightly differently for people with ADHD.

It's definitely not that they are underworking, overworking, that they're damaged or defective or flawed.

It's just that we know there's a spectrum of the way the brain can develop and operate.

And for people with ADHD,

their development of certain areas is just on a slightly different part of that spectrum to someone who doesn't have ADHD.

And as we've said, that can affect how much you focus, how distractible you might be, how restless you are when you're sitting still.

So it's sort of a bit of a complex mix of different chemical balances and circuitry in the brain that's just slightly different.

Yeah, we definitely know that those things can impact.

So I guess like autism, the current understanding of ADHD is that it's something that we are sort of born with in terms of how the brain develops across childhood and across our life.

That's a key part of the diagnosis for adults is actually looking back to early symptoms that were there during your childhood or primary school years.

And so we know there's that kind of genetic or biological underpinning, but then absolutely different things that come our way across childhood years.

potentially even screen time and other things that can impact our focus time and things that can potentially buffer symptoms here and impact how prominent they are or how much they get displayed or not displayed.