ADHD medicine affects the brain's reward system
The new research results have been published in the Journal of Neurophysiology. In Denmark approximately 2-3 per cent of school-age children satisfy diagnostic criteria for ADHD , and therefore it is crucial to know how the medicine works. With a new mathematical reconstruction of a tiny part of the brain region that registers reward and punishment, scientists from the University of Copenhagen are acquiring new knowledge about the effect of ADHD medicine. When reward and punishment signals run through the brain, the chemical dopamine is always involved. "It has been discussed for years whether treating ADHD with Ritalin and similar drugs affects the reward system to any significant degree, simply because the dosage given to patients is so low. We are the first to show that some components of the dopamine signalling pathways are extremely sensitive to drugs like Ritalin. We have also developed a unified theory to describe the effect of such drugs on the dopamine signal,...