What if there's nothing wrong with us and we're just mediocre?
Someone with an IQ of 80 will probably never be able to attain a college degree. But that doesn't mean they have a disease. Their brains just don't work as well as most people's.
good question. One of the hallmarks of ADHD is performance significantly incongruent with "IQ" or other objective measures of intelligence.
The two need to be evaluated together. The hallmark of ADHD kids in school is performance is poor in long term planning related tasks and assignments not in line with their test scores which depend more upon raw intelligence/intellectual function.
Neurocognitive testing is a way of determining this, as it breaks down tasks into specific neurological phenomenon and then is able to localize a defecit.
In neurology, we use different neurocognitive tests to localize the area of a stroke or brain injury all without ever needing to look at a CT scan or MRI.
One of the infamous tests is "draw a clock"
this is an innocuous task, however there are certain types of stroke that will lead to "hemineglect" (look it up. It's fascinating!) where the clock is a circle with the numbers all on one side.
We can use these tests of doing seemingly regular tasks to specifically activate one area of the brain to test its function.
A good thorough ADHD evaluation does specifically this, looking for frontal lobe function in the cingulate gyrus or "pre frontal cortex"
if you're still reading, thanks.
I'm writing a book or two right now IRL, so I pull from that a bit.
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u/[deleted] May 30 '17
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