ADHD & How Anyone Can Improve Their Focus | Huberman Lab Essentials

Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials,

where we revisit past episodes for the

most potent and actionable science-based

tools for mental health, physical

health, and performance.

I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor

of neurobiology and of opthalmology at

Stanford School of Medicine. Today we

are going to talk all about attention

deficit hyperactivity disorder or ADHD.

Now, just a quick reminder that anytime

we discuss a psychiatric disorder, it's

important that we remember that all of

us have the temptation to self-dagnose

or to diagnose others. The clear and

real diagnosis of ADHD really should be

carried out by a psychiatrist, a

physician, or a very well-trained

clinical psychologist.

So right now the current estimates are

that about 1 in 10 children and probably

more have ADHD. Now fortunately about

half of those will resolve with proper

treatment but the other half typically

don't. The other thing that we are

seeing a lot nowadays is increased

levels of ADHD in adults. For sake of

today's discussion, attention, focus and

concentration are essentially the same

thing. So, people with ADHD have trouble

holding their attention.

What is attention? Well, attention is

perception. It's how we are perceiving

the sensory world. For instance, right

now you're hearing sound waves. You are

seeing things. You are sensing things

against your skin, but you are only

paying attention to some of those. And

the ones that you're paying attention to

are your perceptions. So if you hear my

voice, you are perceiving my voice. You

are not paying attention to your other

senses at the moment. Okay? You might

even be outside in a breeze and until I

said that, you might not be perceiving

that breeze, but your body was sensing

it all along.

So attention and focus are more or less

the same thing, but impulse control is

something separate because impulse

control requires pushing out or putting

the blinders on to sensory events in our

environment. It means lack of

perception. Impulse control is about

limiting our perception. People with

ADHD have poor attention and they have

high levels of impulsivity. Yes, they

are distractable. Yes, they are

impulsive. Yes, they are easily annoyed

by things happening in the room. They

sometimes have a high level of

emotionality as well. However, people

with ADHD can have a hyperfocus, an

incredible ability to focus on things

that they really enjoy or are intrigued

by. Now, this is a very important point

because people with ADHD have the

capacity to attend, but they can't

engage that attention for things that

they don't really really want to do.

There are a couple other things that

people with ADHD display quite often.

One is challenges with time perception.

People with ADHD often run late. They

often procrastinate. But what's

interesting and surprising is that if

they are given a deadline, they actually

can perceive time very well. And they

often can focus very well if the

consequences of not completing a task or

not attending are severe enough. If

they're not really concerned about a

deadline or a consequence, well, then

they tend to lose track of time and they

tend to underestimate how long things

will take. The other thing that people

with ADHD have real trouble with is

so-called working memory. Now, you might

think that people with ADHD would have

really poor memories, but in fact,

that's not the case. People with ADHD

often can have a terrific memory for

past events. They can remember upcoming

events quite well. Their memory is

clearly working. However, one aspect of

memory in particular that we call

working memory is often disrupted.

Working memory is the ability to keep

specific information online to recycle

it in your brain over and over again so

that you can use it in the immediate or

short term. A good example of this would

be you meet somebody, they tell you

their name, they give you their phone

number verbally, and you have to walk

back to your phone and enter it into

your phone. People without ADHD might

have to put some effort into it. It

might feel like a bit of a struggle, but

typically they will be able to recite

that phone number in their mind over and

over and then put it into their phone.

People with ADHD tend to lose the

ability or lack the ability to remember

things that they just need to keep

online for anywhere from 10 seconds to a

minute or two. Okay, so we've more or

less established the kind of menu of

items that people with ADHD tend to

have. Some have all of them, some have

just a subset of them. Their severity

can range from very intense to mild. But

in general, it's challenges with

attention and focus, challenges with

impulse control, they get annoyed

easily, they have kind of an

impulsivity, they can't stay on task,

time perception can be off, and they

have a hard time with anything that's

mundane that they're not really

interested in. But again, I just want to

highlight that people with ADHD are able

to obtain heightened levels of focus,

even hyperfocus for things that are

exciting to them and that they really

want to engage in. So, let's drill into

this issue of why people with ADHD

actually can focus very intensely on

things that they enjoy and are curious

about. Now, enjoyment and curiosity,

they're just the way that we describe

our human experience of liking things,

wanting to know more about them. But

from a neurobiological perspective, they

have a very clear identity and

signature. And that's dopamine. Dopamine

is released from neurons. It's what we

call a neurom modulator. And in

particular, dopamine creates a

heightened state of focus. It tends to

contract our visual world. And it tends

to make us pay attention to things that

are outside and beyond the confines of

our skin. It's what we call

exterosception. So, as I mentioned

earlier, you have all these senses

coming in and you can only perceive some

of them because you're only paying

attention to some of them. Dopamine when

it's released in our brain tends to turn

on areas of our brain that narrow our

visual focus and our auditory focus. So,

it creates a cone of auditory attention

that's very narrow. Creates a tunnel of

visual attention that's very narrow.

Whereas, when we have less dopamine, we

tend to view the entire world. We tend

to see the whole scene that we are in.

We tend to hear everything all at once.

So, as I describe this, hopefully you're

already starting to see and understand

how having dopamine release can allow a

person, whether or not they have ADHD or

not, to direct their attention to

particular things in their environment.

Right? So now what we're doing is we're

moving away from attention as this kind

of vague ambiguous term and we're giving

it a neurochemical identity, dopamine,

and we are giving it a neural circuit

identity. And just to put a little bit

of flavor and detail on which neural

circuits those are, I wanted to discuss

two general types of neural circuits

that dopamine tends to enhance. The

first one is called the default mode

network. The default mode network is the

network of brain areas in your brain, in

my brain, and in everybody's brain that

is active when we're not doing anything,

when we're just sitting there idle at

rest. The other set of circuits that

we're going to think about and talk

about with respect to ADHD are the task

networks, the networks of the brain that

make you goal oriented. And those are a

completely different set of brain areas.

However, the default mode network and

these task networks are communicating

with one another and they're doing that

in very interesting ways. Frontal

cortex, no surprise, is in the front.

And you have a dorsal, the top and side,

lateral part, dorsal, prefrontal cortex.

And then you have a brain area called

the posterior singulate cortex. And then

you have an area called the lateral

parietal lobe. Again, you don't need to

remember these names, but these are

three brain areas that normally are

synchronized in their activity. So when

one of these areas is active in a

typical person, the other areas would be

active as well. And in a person with

ADHD or even a person who has

subclinical ADHD or in any human being

who hasn't slept well, what you find is

the default mode network is not

synchronized. These brain areas are just

not playing well together.

Now the task networks include a

different set of structures. It still

involves the prefrontal cortex, but it's

a different part of the prefrontal

cortex. Okay? Tends to be the medial

prefrontal cortex. And there are some

other brain areas that the medial

prefrontal cortex is communicating to

all the time mainly to suppress

impulses. Anytime you're restricting

your behavior, these task directed

networks are very active. Okay. Now,

normally in a person without ADHD,

the task networks and the default mode

networks are going in kind of seessaw

fashion. They are actually what we call

anti-correlated. In a person with ADHD,

they actually tend to be more

correlated. The default mode networks

and the task networks are actually more

coordinated. And we can now confidently

say based on brain imaging studies that

when somebody gets better when they're

treated for ADHD or when they age out of

ADHD as sometimes is the case that the

default mode networks and the task

networks tend to become anti-correlated

again. What dopamine is doing in this

context is dopamine is acting like a

conductor. Dopamine is saying this

circuit should be active then that

circuit should be active. It should be

default mode network and then when the

default mode network is not active then

it should be the task network. And in

ADHD there's something about the

dopamine system that is not allowing it

to conduct these networks and make sure

that they stay what you know the

engineers or physicists or

mathematicians would say out of phase to

be anti-correlated.

So, what exactly is going on with the

dopamine system in people with ADHD? And

what's going on with the dopamine system

in people that have terrific levels of

attention for any task? Well, in the

year 2015, an important paper came out

and it formalized the so-called low

dopamine hypothesis of ADHD. It turns

out that if dopamine levels are too low

in particular circuits in the brain that

it leads to unnecessary firing of

neurons in the brain that are unrelated

to the task that one is trying to do and

that is unrelated to the information

that one is trying to focus on. So if

you think back before, you've got this

default mode network and a task related

network and they need to be in this kind

of concert of anti-correlation and in

ADHD they're firing together. Well, the

problem seems to be that when dopamine

is low, neurons fire more than they

should in these networks that govern

attention.

This is the so-called low dopamine

hypothesis. And if you start looking

anecdotally at what people with ADHD

have done for decades, what you find is

that they tend to use recreational drugs

or they tend to indulge in non-drug

stimulants. So things like smoking a

half a pack of cigarettes and drinking

four cups of coffee a day. or if the

person had access to it, using cocaine

as a recreational drug or amphetamine as

a recreational drug. All of those

substances that I just described, in

particular, cocaine and amphetamine, but

also coffee and cigarettes, increase

levels of multiple neurotransmitters,

but all have the quality of increasing

levels of dopamine in the brain and in

particular in the regions of the brain

that regulate attention and these task

related and default mode networks. Now,

young children fortunately don't have

access to those kinds of stimulants most

of the time. But if you look at

children, even very young children with

ADHD,

they show things like preference for

sugary foods, which also act as dopamine

inducing stimulants. For a long time, it

was thought that children with ADHD

consume too many sugary foods or drink

too much soda or adults with ADHD would

take recreational drugs like

methamphetamine or cocaine or would

drink coffee to excess or smoke

cigarettes to excess because they had

poor levels of attention and because

they couldn't make good decisions, they

were too impulsive and so forth. Knowing

what we now know about dopamine and the

fact that having enough dopamine is

required in order to coordinate these

neural circuits that allow for focus and

quality decision-making.

An equally valid idea is that these

children and these adults are actually

trying to self-medicate by pursuing

these compounds. Right? Things like

cocaine lead to huge increases in

dopamine. Well, what happens with when

somebody with ADHD takes that drug? It

turns out they actually obtain

heightened levels of focus. Their

ability to focus on things other than

things they absolutely care intensely

about goes up. Likewise, children who

consume anything that increases their

levels of dopamine. If those children

have ADHD,

they tend to be calmer. They tend to be

able to focus more. So dopamine and low

levels of dopamine apparently are what's

wrong in people with ADHD. That dopamine

hypothesis is what led to the idea that

treating people, children and adults

included with dopamineergic compounds

would somehow increase their ability to

focus. And if you look at the major

drugs that were developed and now

marketed by pharmaceutical companies for

the treatment of ADHD,

those drugs have names like rolin.

Nowadays, it's typically things like

aderall,

modafanil, and some of the other

derivatives. They all serve to increase

levels of dopamine. in particular

dopamine in the networks that control

task directed behavior and that

coordinate the default mode network and

these task related networks. Let's take

a step back for a second and just ask

what are these drugs? We know they

increase dopamine but what are they

really? Well, rtoolin, also called

methylenadate,

is very similar to amphetamine. Speed or

what's typically called speed in the

street drug uh nomenclature.

Aderall is basically a combination of

amphetamine and dextromphetamine.

Now, some of you probably realize this

that Adderall is amphetamine, but I'm

guessing that there are a good number of

you out there, perhaps even parents and

kids, that don't realize that these

drugs like cocaine and amphetamine,

methamphetamine, which are incredibly

dangerous and incredibly

habit forming and have high potential

for abuse. Well, the pharmaceutical

versions of those are exactly what are

used to treat ADHD. Now, they're not

exactly like cocaine or methamphetamine,

but they are structurally and chemically

very similar. And their net effect in

the brain and body is essentially the

same, which is to increase dopamine

primarily, but also to increase levels

of a neuromodulator called epinephrine

or norepinephrine, also called

noradrenaline and adrenaline. Those

names are the same. So, what I'm

essentially saying is that the drugs

that are used to treat ADHD are

stimulants, and they look very much

like, in fact, nearly identical to some

of the so-called street drug stimulants

that we all hear are so terrible.

However, I do want to emphasize that at

the appropriate dosages and working with

a quality psychiatrist or neurologist or

family physician, it does have to be a

board-certified MD that prescribes these

things. Many people with ADHD achieve

excellent relief with these drugs. Not

all of them, but many of them do,

especially if these treatments are

started early in life. So now knowing

what these drugs are, I want to raise

the question of why prescribe these

drugs. Children have a brain that's very

plastic, meaning it can remodel itself

and change in response to experience

very, very quickly compared to adults.

Taking stimulants as a child if you are

a child diagnosed with ADHD

allows that forebrain task related

network to come online to be active at

the appropriate times and because those

children are young it allows those

children to learn what focus is and to

sort of follow or enter that tunnel of

focus. Now by taking a drug it's

creating focus artificially. It's not

creating focus because they're super

interested in something. It's chemically

inducing a state of focus. And let's

face it, a lot of childhood and school

and becoming a functional adult is about

learning how to focus even though you

don't want to do something. So, what are

we to make of this whole picture that we

need more dopamine, but these kids with

ADHD, they're getting their dopamine by

way of a drug, which is for all the

world amphetamines. What are the

long-term consequences? What are the

short-term consequences? Well, in order

to get to some of those answers, I went

to one of my colleagues, a pediatric

neurologist that specializes in the

treatment of epilepsy and ADHD in kids

of all ages from age 3 to 21. I asked

the following questions. First of all, I

asked, what do you think about giving

young kids amphetamine, provided that

the lowest possible dose is used and

that that dosage is modulated as they

grow older and develop those powers of

attention,

their observation was that they've seen

more kids benefit than not benefit from

that. Now, the fact that this person,

this now friend of mine and colleague of

mine, has so much expertise in the way

that the brain works and is considering

putting their child on such medication,

I said, you know, why wouldn't you wait

until your kid reaches puberty? I mean,

we know that in boys and in girls, there

are increases in testosterone and

estrogen during puberty that

dramatically change the way that the

body appears, but also that dramatically

change the way that the brain functions.

In particular, we know this that puberty

triggers the activation of so-called

fronttotemporal task related executive

functioning. That's just fancy science

speak for being able to focus, being

able to direct your attention, being

able to control your impulses. And their

answer was very specific and I think

very important. What they said was look

neuroplasticity

is greatest in childhood and tapers off

after about age 25. But neuroplasticity

from age three until age 12 or 13 is

exceedingly high. If you have the

opportunity to work with a quality

physician and treat these things early,

these drugs can allow these frontal

circuits, these task related circuits to

achieve their appropriate levels of

functioning and for kids to learn how to

focus in a variety of different

contexts. So, we've talked about the

neural circuits of focus and the

chemistry of focus, but we haven't

talked yet about what would make us

better at focusing and what focusing

better really is. So, let's take a step

back and think about how we focus and

how to get better at focus. And I'm

going to share with you a tool for which

there are terrific research data that

will allow you in a single session to

enhance your ability to focus

in theory forever.

What we're about to talk about is when

attention works and when attention

falters. And what we are specifically

going to talk about are what are called

attentional blinks. Not actual eye

blinks. Attentional blinks are really

easy to understand if you think about a

where's Waldo task. You know this task

where's Waldo where you know there a

bunch of people and objects and things

in a in a picture and somewhere in there

is Waldo with the striped hat and the

glasses and kind of a skinny dude and

you have to find Waldo. And so it's a

visual search and it's visual search for

an object that has distinct features but

is embedded in this ocean of other

things that could easily be confused as

Waldo. So you tend to look look look

look look. When you find Waldo or when

you search for a target in some other

visual search task at that moment your

nervous system celebrates a little bit

and it celebrates through the release of

neurochemicals that make you feel good.

You found it and you pause. Now the

pause is interesting because when you

pause what we know from many experiments

is that in that moment of pause and mild

celebration

however mild

you are not able to see another Waldo

sitting right next to it. So what this

means is in attending to something in

searching and in identifying a visual

target your attention blinked. It shut

off for a second. If you see something

that you're looking for or you're very

interested in something, you are

definitely missing other information

in part because you're overfocusing on

something. And this leads to a very

interesting hypothesis about what might

go wrong in ADHD

where we've always thought that they

cannot focus and yet we know they can

focus on things they care very much

about. Well, maybe, just maybe, they are

experiencing more attentional blinks

than people who do not have ADHD.

And indeed, there are data now to

support the possibility that that's

actually what's happening. So, what they

really need is this property that we

call open monitoring. First of all,

your visual system has two modes of

processing. It can be highly focused, a

soda straw view. However, there's also a

property of your visual system that

allows you to dilate your gaze to be in

so-called panoramic vision. Panoramic

vision is actually mediated by a

separate stream or set of neural

circuits going from the eye into the

brain. And it's a stream or set of

circuits that isn't just wide angle

view. It also is better at processing

things in time. Its frame rate is

higher. You can use panoramic vision to

access the state that we call open

monitoring. When people do that, they

are able to attend to and recognize

multiple targets. So, this is something

that can be trained up and people can

practice whether or not they have ADHD

or not. What it involves is learning how

to dilate your gaze consciously. That's

actually quite easy for most people. You

can consciously go into open gaze and

then you can contract your field of view

as well. That might not seem like a

significant or unusual practice or that

it would have any impact at all, but

remarkably just doing that once for 17

minutes significantly reduced the number

of attentional blinks that people would

carry out. In other words, their focus

got better in a near permanent way

without any additional training. Now,

let's talk about actual blinks. The sort

that you do with your eyelids. Believe

it or not, your perception of time is

also changed on a rapid basis, momentto-

moment basis by how often you blink. I

want to just emphasize one study in

particular which is quite appropriately

titled time dilates after spontaneous

blinking. They examine the relationship

between fluctuations in timing and

blinking. And to make a long story

short, what they found is that right

after blinks, we reset our perception of

time. Now, what's interesting and will

immediately make sense to you as to why

this is important is that the rate of

blinking is controlled by dopamine. So,

what this means is that dopamine is

controlling attention. Blinks relate to

attention and focus. And therefore, the

dopamine and blinking system is one way

that you constantly modulate and update

your perception of time. And

fortunately, it's also one that you can

control. So, the basic takeaway of this

study was that blinking controls time

perception, but also that levels of

dopamine can alter your sense of time.

And stay with me here, and that blinking

and dopamine are inextricably linked.

They are working together to control

your attention. Let's remember back to

the very beginning of the episode what's

going on in people with ADHD.

They are not good at managing their

time. They tend to run late or they are

disorganized. Their dopamine is low. We

know that as well. And so they are

underestimating time intervals. And so

it makes perfect sense that they would

be late. It makes perfect sense that

they would lose track of time or the

ability to focus. This is really

exciting because what it means is that

children with ADHD, adults with ADHD, or

people with normal levels of focus that

want to improve their ability to focus

can do so through a training that

involves learning how often to blink and

when and how to keep their visual focus

on a given target. And it turns out this

study has actually been done entitled

improvement of attention in elementary

school students through fixation focused

training activity. And I won't go

through all the details, but what they

found was a short period of focusing on

a visual target allowed these school

children to greatly enhance their

ability to focus on other types of

information. And a significant component

of the effect was due to the way that

they were controlling the shutters on

their eyes, their eyelids, and

controlling their blinks. So what they

did in this study is they had these kids

focus their visual attention on some

object that was relatively close like

their hand for a minute or so which

actually takes some effort if you try

and do that. They were allowed to blink.

It only took a few minutes each day to

do this 30 seconds in one condition or

maybe a minute and then at another

station of looking a little bit further

out and a little bit further out.

However, there was an important feature

of this study that is definitely worth

mentioning, which is before they did

this visual focus task or training, they

did a series of physical movements with

the kids so that the kids could sort of

eliminate or move out some of their

desire to move and would thereby enhance

their ability to sit still. Now, it

should make perfect sense that these

shutters on the front of your eyes, they

aren't just there for winking, and they

aren't just there for cosmetic purposes.

They are there to regulate the amount of

information going into your nervous

system. And they are there to regulate

how long you are bringing information

into your nervous system and in what

bins. How widely or finally you are

binning. Time is set by how often you

blink. And how widely or specifically

you are grabbing attention from the

visual world is set by whether or not

you're viewing things very specifically

like a crosshair or through a soda straw

view like this or whether or not you are

in this panoramic sort of whole

environment mode. This kind of fisheye

lens or wide angle lens mode. So now I

want to switch back to talking about

some of the drugs that are typically

used to access those systems,

prescription drugs. And I want to talk

about some of the new and emerging

non-prescription approaches to

increasing the levels of dopamine,

acetyloline, and serotonin in the brain

using various supplement type compounds

because several of them are showing

really remarkable efficacy in excellent

peer-reviewed studies. So before moving

to some of the newer atypical compounds

and things sold over the counter, I'd

like to just briefly return to the

classic drugs that are used to treat

ADHD.

These are the ones I mentioned earlier.

Methylenadate also called rtoolin.

Modafanil,

armodafanil is another one and aderall.

Again, all of these work by increasing

levels of dopamine and norepinephrine. I

think it is important to understand the

extent to which they all carry more or

less the same side effect such as high

propensity for addiction and abuse.

Amphetamines of any kind as well as

cocaine can cause sexual side effects

because they're vasoc constrictors. So

these drugs are not without their

consequences. In addition, they almost

all carry cardiac effects, right? They

increase heart rate, but they also have

effects on constriction of blood vessels

and arteries and veins and so forth in

ways that can create cardiovascular

problems. The best use of things like

aderall, modafanil,

armodafanil, and rlinin is going to be

to combine those treatments with

behavioral exercises that actively

engage the very circuits that you're

trying to train up and enhance and then

perhaps I want to highlight perhaps

tapering off those drugs so that then

one can use those circuits without any

need for chemical intervention. So

despite any controversy that might be

out there, I think it's fair to say that

the consumption of omega-3 fatty acids

can positively modulate the systems for

attention and focus. So then the

question becomes how much

EPA, how much DHA does that differ for

uh what's helpful for depression etc.

And actually it does differ. In

reviewing the studies for this, it

appears that a threshold level of 300 mg

of DHA turns out to be an important

inflection point. So, typically fish

oils or other sources of omega-3s will

have DHA and EPA. And typically, it's

the EPA that's harder to get at

sufficient levels, meaning you have to

take quite a lot of fish oil in order to

get above that 1,00 milligram or 2,000

milligram threshold to improve mood and

other functions. But for sake of

attention, there are 10 studies that

have explored this in detail. And while

the EPA component is important, the most

convincing studies point to the fact

that getting above 300 milligrams per

day of DHA is really where you start to

see the attentional effects. Now,

fortunately, if you're getting

sufficient EPA for sake of mood and

other biological functions,

almost without question, you're getting

300 milligrams or more of DHA. What's

interesting is that there's another

compound phosphoidal sterine that has

been explored for its capacity to

improve the symptoms of ADHD.

Phosphodidal serene taken for 2 months

for 200 milligrams per day was able to

reduce the symptoms of ADHD in children.

It has not been looked at in adults yet,

as at least as far as I know, but that

this effect was greatly enhanced by the

consumption of omega-3 fatty acids. So,

now we're starting to see synergistic

effects of omega-3 fatty acids and

phosphodidal sterine. So, I'd like to

talk about the drug modafanil and the

closely related drug Amodafanil. AR

modafinyl because modafanyl and arm

modafanil are gaining popularity out

there both for treatment of ADHD and

narcolepsy but also for communities of

people that are trying to stay awake

long periods of time. So it's actively

used in the military by first

responders. It's uh gaining popularity

on college campuses and people are using

it more and more as an alternative to

aderall and rolin and excessive amounts

of coffee. It does increase focus and to

a dramatic extent want to emphasize that

unlike rolin and aderall modafanyl and

armodafanil are weak dopamine reuptake

inhibitors and that's how they lead to

increases in dopamine. Now you may

notice that I haven't talked much about

acetylcholine. Acetylcholine is a

neurotransmitter that at the neuron to

muscle connections the so-called

neuromuscular junctions is involved in

generating muscular contractions of all

kinds for all movements.

Acetyloline is also released from two

sites in the brain. There is a

collection of neurons in your brain stem

that send projections forward kind of

like a sprinkler system that's very

diffuse to release acetyloline. And

those neurons uh reside in an area or a

structure that's called the poduno

pontine nucleus the ppn and then there's

a separate collection of neurons in the

basil forbrain called unimaginatively

nucleus basalis the nucleus at the base.

And they also hose the brain with

acetylcholine but in a much more

specific way. So one is sort of like a

sprinkler system and the other one is

more like a fire hose to a particular

location. And those two sources of

acettooline

collaborate to activate particular

locations in the brain and really bring

about a tremendous degree of focus to

whatever is happening at those

particular synapses. So now you have an

example and you have an understanding

and hopefully a picture in your mind of

how all this is working. Not

surprisingly then, drugs that increase

cholineergic or acetyloline transmission

will increase focus and cognition. One

such compound is so-called alpha GPC,

which is a form of choline and increases

acetylcholine transmission. Dosages as

high as 1,200 milligrams per day, which

is a very high dosage spread out.

Typically, it's 300 or 400 milligrams

spread out throughout the day, have been

shown to offset some of the effects of

age related cognitive decline, improve

cognitive functioning, people that don't

have age related cognitive decline.

Typically, when people are using alpha

GPC to study or to enhance learning of

any kind, they will take somewhere

between 300 and 600 milligrams. That's

more typical. Again, you have to check

with your doctor. You have to decide if

the safety margins are appropriate for

you. And there are some over-the-counter

compounds that are in active use out

there for treatment of ADHD and in use

for simply trying to improve focus.

Elyroine, it's an amino acid that acts

as a precursor to the neuromodulator

dopamine. The dosaging can be very

tricky to dial in. Sometimes it makes

people feel too euphoric or too jittery

or too alert that they are then unable

to focus well. So the dosage ranges are

huge. You see evidence for 100

milligrams all the way up to 1,200

milligrams. It's something that really

should be approached with caution

especially for people that have any kind

of underlying psych psychiatric or mood

disorder because disregulation of the

dopamine system is you know central to

many of the mood disorders such as

depression but also especially mania

mania bipolar disorder schizophrenia

things of that sort. So it's something

that really should be approached with

caution. Everybody nowadays seems to

have a smartphone. They grab our

attention entirely. But within that

small box of attention, there are

millions of attentional windows

scrolling by. Right? So just because

it's one device that we look at does not

mean that we are focused. We are focused

on our phone. But because of the way in

which context switches up so fast within

the phone, it's thought that the brain

is struggling now to leave that rapid

turnover of context. Even though there

are trillions, infinite number of bits

of information in the actual physical

world, your attentional window, that

aperture of constriction and dilating

that visual window is the way in which

you cope with all that overwhelming

information. Typically, well, within the

phone, your visual aperture is set to a

given width. And within there, your

attentional window is grabbing it near

infinite number of bits of information,

colors, movies. And so the question is,

does that sort of interaction on a

regular basis lead to deficits in the

types of attention that we need in order

to perform well in work and school,

relationships, etc. And the short answer

is yes. We are inducing a sort of ADHD.

I'm not here to tell you what to do, but

I think whether or not you have ADHD or

not, if you're an adolescent, limiting

your smartphone use to 60 minutes per

day or less, and if you're an adult, to

2 hours per day or less, is going to be

among the very best ways to maintain

your ability to focus at whatever level

you can. Now, and as I always say, most

of the things that we get recognized for

in life, success in life, in every

endeavor, whether or not it's school,

relationships, sport, creative works of

any kind, are always proportional to the

amount of focus that we can bring that

activity. It is important to rest, of

course, to get proper sleep, but I stand

behind that statement. And I leave you

with that about attention and cell

phones and how cell phones are indeed

eroding our attentional capacities. So I

realize I covered a lot of information

about ADHD and the biology of focus and

how to get better at focusing. We talked

about the behavioral and psychological

phenotypes of ADHD. We talked about the

underlying neural circuitry. We also

talked about the neurochemistry and we

talked about the various prescription

drug treatments that are aimed at that

neurochemistry and aimed at increasing

focus in children and adults with ADHD.

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