Stimulant Medications Enhance Brain Development (Neuroprotection) in Children with ADHD

This short video discusses a very recent study showing that children with ADHD differ from typical children in brain development. But it also demonstrated that those who remained on stimulant medication had enhanced brain growth and did not differ from typical peers compared to those children with ADHD who had not taken stimulant medication. This is known as neuroprotection in the research literature. My earlier video on this topic discussed the findings from more than 30 studies and several reviews that concluded much the same thing – it seems that stimulant medications may enhance brain development in areas of the brain associated with ADHD that are disturbed, less developed, less functional, and less interconnected than in typical peers. This effect may not be seen in all children or adults but a sizable minority may find this effect to be the case. Website discussing this study: PsyPost - https://www.psypost.org/stimulant-med... Original journal article: F. Wu et al. (2024). Stimulant medications in children with ADHD normalize the structure of brain regions associated with attention and reward. Neuropsychopharmacology. 49, pages 1330–1340. https://www.nature.com/articles/s4138...