I understand that there is a (conceptual?) thing called Executive Function, which comprises planning, time sense, self-talk, task management, task switching and other such “higher level” brain functions. And that it is different than the base-level inattention/impulsivity/hyperactivity issues. (Inability to transition from one task to another is a real issue of mine. It can take days to transition to a task which only takes hours to accomplish. Thus my interest.)

Do any of you wondrously well informed folks have reference material to suggest? Or some words of wisdom? Barkley’s “ADHD and the Nature of Self-Control” has been suggested. I think I “get” what EF is, but want to make sure I’m not out in left field somewhere. I’m looking to learn more about this.

If there are previous threads on this subject could you point them out? I’ve searched this forum for as long as my attention span would allow, and got back to threads a few years old. Perhaps things have changed, or new resources have become available, since then. I’ve googled and wiki’d, but I bet this forum is a WAY better place to find the straight scoop.

Thanks in advance, --u

All I can say about the executive functions is that they are "the pieces that are missing from the puzzle" as far as my experience with ADHD is concerned. Inhibition is a process involved with the executive function process. I am hyperactive so my inexperience is not the same as an inattentive type, I was a straight A student in school so it didn't seem priority to them to teach me patience. I have no understanding of patience at all and that is extremely disabling when you cannot waste a single second. Inattentives I would assume have issues that are more motivational. Either way, the executive function problem is really the more neurological description of ADHD. Other aspects are imitation and utilization behaviors (imitating people and walking into a doctor's office to wait and picking up the stethoscope as if to use it are part of these patterns seen in environmental dependency syndrome and frontal lobe diseases and injury) Other disorders commonly identified as having dysfunction of executive functions are Schizophrenia, PTSD, Borderline Personality Disorder, OCD and OCD-spectrum disorders, Antisocial Personality Disorder, Bipolar Disorder... reality of that is I think people's normal ability to self regulate is the key...

Warning: controversial material ahead… (grins)

Barkley’s wrong about this one, along with the rest. We can tell you about executive function, having been around when the term was first used in this context.

The behavioral artifacts you mention are pretty much what Barkley and the rest mean when they use the term, and the behavior certainly exists. It’s even mildly correct to collect them all under the umbrella term EF, as long as you keep the meaning in the correct context.

That context is, and was, this: the concept ‘executive functions’ applies to patterns that we perceive in human behavior. It’s a valid descriptor and a useful aid to analysis, but only in that framework.

It is one of several terms that constitute a (mostly) formal descriptive framework, and it was originally applied to speculative modeling of brain function only as evidenced in patterns of behavior. (Originally here means the late Sixties / early Seventies, and to a limited extent ten or so years before.)

So what’s wrong with the current use? Plenty, starting with the breaking of the context. Current usage is intended to apply to the operation of actual structures in the brain, real neurons doing what makes us, us.

It might seem reasonable to assume that patterns in behavior (which after all originates in the brain) could be associated with certain areas of the brain, but science doesn’t work like that.

To extend the concept of an executive (or any modeled function) beyond it’s original intended context requires justification, in the form of data showing the existence of a connection and a plausible mechanism for it.

That means we can’t simply assume that a behavioral artifact must have a causal relationship with some neuron or neurons firing, even if we know that neurons firing certainly caused the artifact.

Here, the difference between ‘causal’ and ‘caused’ is simple: ‘causal’ almost always implies that the associated activity was meaningful in terms of the context of the result. ‘Caused’ simply means that there’s a mechanical relationship, that this thing over here triggered this other thing over here.

So when we say neurons firing ultimately ‘caused’ the behavior that we associate with EF, there’s no implication that whatever triggered the chain of events necessarily had anything to do with the intent to control behavior in an executive way.

I’ll say that again, as simply as I can: there are reasons that neurons fire, and that firing may ultimately cause behavior that can correctly be interpreted in terms of ‘executive functions’. But those reasons don’t necessarily have anything to do with ‘executive functions’; it’s not necessary that they even make sense on the level that we observe behavior. (Actually, it’s likely they don’t.)

So before we can assume that the abstract formal description of behavior executive function represents real working neural structures, we need to make that connection. The term was never intended to imply brain function directly, and back in the day everybody was careful to note that.

Those days are gone, and the term is widely applied as if it’s more or less directly related to working neurons. But nobody’s yet done the homework to support that relationship; we’ve looked, and asked repeatedly if anyone knows of new (or old) research in this area.

Nothing pops up, and we’ve been whacking away at this point for quite a few years. We are reasonably sure nobody’s bothered, but not because we feel like we’ve checked every corner. Our own work in human communication indicates there’s a perfectly good reason that people, even smart researchers, might be expected to fumble this relatively simple bit of basic science.

This is a problem, of course; if we want to advance the idea that lots of bright researchers are repeatedly screwing up, in the same way, we had better be prepared to also suggest a plausible reason. If we don’t, we’re making the same mistake they are, only in a different context.

An important part of our work is based directly on the commonly accepted understanding of how neurons function, and the models we derive from that don’t have anything like an ‘executive function’.

They do produce patterns of behavior that looks like an executive is at work, exerting high-level control over Important Stuff, just as we see in real live examples. What the models are actually doing is counterintuitive, which should be expected; neural structures don’t work like the ordinary, deterministic machines we see everywhere.

The way the models are organized plays a part, too; they predict the existence of previously unexpected operations taking place in our brains, stuff we don’t normally see because the function has selected to accomplish exactly that end. The only commonly recognized example of the basic mechanism at work is DID, or Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder).

The same mechanism has been found in several unexpected areas, places we all go in our heads every day, exactly as our models predict. One is associated with processing that is likely to be active whenever a researcher starts to think about the connection between neurons and observed behavior.

The result is what we’ve just described: a person doing all kinds of good science, day after day, except right here in this one area in which s/he’s essentially blind.

There are other implications of this. One is that this post is likely to strike a nerve or two, but we assure you every bit if it is supportable. And we really were around when the term was first being commonly applied, actively involved in a peripheral way (through our own research) with the community that invented it, which has to be good for sumpthin’.

We were trying to understand how the brain functions in what we thought was a different area, but in the end it turned out to be the same problem that everyone else was looking at. You can’t figure out the general principles by which neural structures work without understanding how they can be applied to all areas of the brain.

None of this will prevent people from making that same mistake, even here in the forums where we’re all nominally on the same page. There obviously are ways to circumvent the problem, and AD/HD gives us the tools to do that. But in a sense the first purpose of the mechanism that causes the problem is to protect itself, so just telling folks usually doesn’t have much impact.

Whatever we say tends to disappear like it was sucked into a black hole, which is incidentally our name for the mechanism…

Stabile

Thank you for the detailed and learned response. Are you saying that, while EF often clump together as a package (or pattern) of behaviors they don't necessarily have anything to do with the nuts-and-bolts of brain behavior? Does that mean that when people (these days) use the EF term they are actually thinking of a particular physical place in the brain, and a particular set of neuro-bio-chemical processes whereby this package (supposedly) arises? If so, that's something I didn't know, and that is progress for me in learning, thanks!

Am I off the track yet? Is it the case that researchers KNOW that there is no neurochemical basis for EF, or could it be that they just haven't found it yet? Or is this an unresolved issue of active research?

I'm an outsider in this (although an insider in other areas of science), but it strikes me that our knowledge of the brain is pretty darned rudimentary (compared to our knowledge of, say, liver or heart function).

I guess the reason this matters to me is that if we KNOW Executive Dysfunction isn't a brain thing, then it must be a behavioural thing, and may be amenable to treatment through Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or biofeedback, or whatever. If, on the other hand, we KNOW it's a brain thing, then we should be looking toward a chemical therapy for treatment, and CBT is more like trying to teach an elephant to fly. Or do we Strongly Suspect it's a brain thing we don't know enough about yet.

My personal experience is that my inattentiveness responds to Adderall, but what I am currently thinking of as Executive Dysfunction does not. I'm trying to figure out how to make a priority-based plan and stick to it.

Also, out of curiosity now, you use the term "we" a lot. Who is this "we"? (a) the neurology research community? (b) ADDforumites who know and care, but aren't necessarily university PhD neuro-types? (c) you, (d) some combination of a-c, (e) something else.

Thanks for your time. (Ain't this forum great!) --u

Oh please do try the forum search engine at the top of the screen :) just type in "executive function". There have been many threads with many people discussing executive functions! I am sure you can find a lot of great information that way. Hope that helps!

That post is not controversial at all, IMHO!


re: Brain Science
The Frontal Lobe (where the Executive Function areas are located) is so complicated.
Even if you take ahuge book like Kandel's tome on neural science (a neuropsych classic), it cannot touch on all that can 'go right' or 'go wrong' with a brain system.

Science just cannot simplify the brain's functions that easily. The brain is likely the least understood bodily organ/system. (Part of the stigma of mental disorders! No one gets ashamed of their kidney having a problem, now do they? <G>)

re: Methods for studying Brain Function and Impairment
The two main methods for studying "what does what" in the brain are functional studies, and lesion studies. Yet they do not provide all the answers -- esp. where function or impairment is very subtle, non-declarative, not overtly behavioural, etc.

Minimal, but highly impacting deficits can be missed by Neuropsychological Testing. (Which is why I think a lot of Psychological Testing is questionable. I have seen grossly impairments in people be "missed" by ADHD/LD testing, including myself -- esp. if they have islands of high intelligence.)

The fact that ADHD and/or ED and/or LDs can affect so many areas in some (and not others) is likely is one of the reasons why we see ADHDers and EDers and LDers (in various combinations) who all present so differently.

Stabile

Thank you for the detailed and learned response. Are you saying that, while EF often clump together as a package (or pattern) of behaviors they don't necessarily have anything to do with the nuts-and-bolts of brain behavior? Does that mean that when people (these days) use the EF term they are actually thinking of a particular physical place in the brain, and a particular set of neuro-bio-chemical processes whereby this package (supposedly) arises? If so, that's something I didn't know, and that is progress for me in learning, thanks!
That’s basically it. Barkley and others are gnawing on the problem with a bent to discover the underlying physical causes. That is, they would like to identify the differences between AD/HD brains and Normal brains, with the implicit idea that information could somehow be useful in treating (or at least understanding) it.


Am I off the track yet? Is it the case that researchers KNOW that there is no neurochemical basis for EF, or could it be that they just haven't found it yet? Or is this an unresolved issue of active research?
It’s more like researchers aren’t thinking critically enough about the question, but they don’t recognize it.

It will always be possible to find a neurochemical connection of some sort, simply because neurochemistry is what’s doing the work. Since we know ADDers behave differently, and behavior is due to the brain, we must expect to find physical differences on some level.

The problem is identifying the significance, i.e., determining whether those differences are merely shadows of the underlying phenomena, or innocent bystanders, or actually implicated in its appearance.

Even if we can find a neurochemical connection that we then prove is implicated in the appearance of AD/HD, that doesn’t mean it’s the cause. You have to first figure out why the neurochemical difference exists. Given the presence of complex regulatory systems with multiple layers of feedback, directly determining a cause for such differences may not be possible.

It doesn’t help that the current knowledge about neurotransmitters in the human brain is severely limited by our lack of tools. Nobody can tell you from direct measurement what’s going on in your brain when you take Ritalin, for example.

This is another area where assumptions have crept in without notice; anymore, most researchers fail to note the chain of assumptions that link Petri dish data with their models of what’s happening in the brain.

It’s very difficult to monitor molecular level chemical processes in living tissue, and even more so if you don’t want to damage the experimental subject. So lots of assumptions underlie pretty much everything we think we know about the dynamic state of neurotransmitters in real people.


I'm an outsider in this (although an insider in other areas of science), but it strikes me that our knowledge of the brain is pretty darned rudimentary (compared to our knowledge of, say, liver or heart function).

I guess the reason this matters to me is that if we KNOW Executive Dysfunction isn't a brain thing, then it must be a behavioural thing, and may be amenable to treatment through Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or biofeedback, or whatever. If, on the other hand, we KNOW it's a brain thing, then we should be looking toward a chemical therapy for treatment, and CBT is more like trying to teach an elephant to fly. Or do we Strongly Suspect it's a brain thing we don't know enough about yet.
(grins) Nicely stated. You’ve pretty much summed it all up, right there.

One of the places we get slammed when we talk about this is the unwarranted assumption we’re saying EF isn’t valid in any context. That’s not true at all; it’s perfectly reasonable to model behavior in this way, and the therapies that address the behavioral context are modestly successful.

Not all use a descriptive framework that includes EF, but that only goes to illustrate the point. The utility lies in the way a consistent framework allows you to analyze patterns; to a certain extent, it’s the consistency that’s important, rather than the details.

We have no problem with the concepts EF represents; we can certainly see the same patterns, in ourselves and others. But we don’t see them reflected in the deep structure of the brain; at that level, the decisions that we perceive as underlying EF are predetermined.

That shouldn’t bother anyone too much; on the same level, you can see clearly that consciousness is purely interpretive. If we didn’t predetermine in a complicated way what we’re going to do in any particular situation, we wouldn’t be able to do anything at all.

I told ya’ it’s counterintuitive, and there it is. It goes deeper than that, but just this example communicates the flavor nicely, I think. (grins…)


My personal experience is that my inattentiveness responds to Adderall, but what I am currently thinking of as Executive Dysfunction does not. I'm trying to figure out how to make a priority-based plan and stick to it.
You and me both, and lots more of us, too. Welcome to the monkey house…

We don’t have an answer to this problem, and if you find something that works, let everyone know about it. There are plenty of coping strategies that help, up to and including paying someone else to do the organizing for you.

We believe it’s largely due to the differences in how our brains work as compared to normals’. (Duh!) In particular, it’s likely we have a different but equally valid model of how priorities should be set, one that conflicts with the normals’ model.

What happens with that as a starting point varies dramatically from one individual to another. One expected outcome is failure to ever form a well-converged model of how priorities should be reflected in behavior.

This can occur when the persistent patterns (observed internally) that would make up the ADDer model are interfered with by the patterns observed in others’ behavior. So the internal model never converges, or converges on an immature, ambiguous state.

That’s only one potential factor; there are lots of others, all involving consequences of the differences in the form of our internal model of reality, including our models of our selves and others. Such differences would naturally be reflected as neurochemical differences, rather than be directly due to them. So there ya’ go…


Also, out of curiosity now, you use the term "we" a lot. Who is this "we"? (a) the neurology research community? (b) ADDforumites who know and care, but aren't necessarily university PhD neuro-types? (c) you, (d) some combination of a-c, (e) something else.

Thanks for your time. (Ain't this forum great!) --u
Yup, we really like it, too, and sorry for the confusion. Here’s a bit about us, which feel free to skip:

‘We’ are Tom and Kay, and we have an ADD family. Almost everything posted as ‘Stabile’ is a joint effort of one degree or another; I used to have a code for the signature of a post, indicating whether the content was something we had discussed before posting, or worked on together, or was my phrasing of our common ideas, and so on.

I can’t really take sole credit for most of what we talk about; none of it would exist without Kay’s specific contribution.

A lot of it happens over a cell phone while she’s driving to and from work, which is why I do the typing. The reason we have anything to say beyond the usual experience of having/being AD/HD is our ongoing theoretical work on human communication, which started in earnest during our college years.

After college we didn’t pursue a situation in which we could concentrate only on the research, but we never quit, either. I did continue to work on some of the technical details in various research support positions for quite a few years, but most of the application was in computing theory, not always related to the communications theory in an obvious way.

The rest was almost entirely independent, but we never strayed too far from the research community. Various members of the rest of our family are into one area of interest or another, and we’re located in a pretty interesting place, too, if you like (for example) to be able to go hear Ed Witten talk about M-theory on the odd Thursday afternoon.

A lot of the best part of our work is mathematical in nature, due to the fact that everything we’ve been discussing turns out to be logically defined in the brain, rather than directly reflecting some physical neural operating principle.

Hardly anyone doing AD/HD research has picked up on that; we came to the realization only after studying James Albus’ original thesis work, described in the first few papers he published.

It took us over seven years of part time study to understand it to our satisfaction, but it’s really not as hard as that makes it sound. Lots of what we had to do back then would be second nature nowadays.

Albus devised the first modern neural network model (which he called CMAC) several years before that term was invented, but he never got the credit he deserved. His overview of the state of research in the early Seventies is invaluable; most of the cited material on basic neural physiology and cellular biochemistry is still relevant and widely referenced, with only a few relatively minor additions since then.

Albus’ analysis of the logical structure of the cerebellum led directly to our understanding of the general nature of neural structures as a dual, simultaneously expressing both a logical model and a pattern matching engine.

Incidentally, the common element between AD/HD and the communications problems we were studying is the common structural forms that can be found in the logic expressed by neural structures. That is, we were able to identify two different logical organizing principles by which information is stored in the brain.

One turns out to be deeply related to AD/HD, and also the gender related differences in interpersonal communication that we originally set out to understand.

There’s good reason to expect that the rise of the newer logical form, beginning perhaps five to ten thousand years ago, signals the onset of a speciation event similar to the original event that gave rise to h. sapiens.

Some fun, eh? No wonder we have problems getting organized…

The Frontal Lobe (where the Executive Function areas are located) is so complicated…
(more grins…) Good point. In fact, when you try to analyze its function by interpreting externally observable behavior, it’s complicated enough that chimerical relationships can arise.

The impression that there is actually an intentional ‘executive’ functioning in the prefrontal cortex is one of those chimerical relationships. (‘Intentional’ in this context doesn’t necessarily mean conscious intent, but rather purposeful activity.)

If I recall, our take on the neural structures in the prefrontal cortex is that they’re involved in the selection process that ‘assembles’ the various models active in the interpretation of the (heavily preprocessed) content of the sensory input stream.

As such they likely also play a role in the processes by which new models are created and stored, and existing ones updated. By definition, all neural models are updated at every access automatically, by a process intrinsic to the mechanism of access itself.

Experientially, this activity is likely related to the moment-by-moment form of our conscious experience within our internal model of reality, to some types of memory, and so on. It’s what creates the impression of continuity of experience, that we’re really here and aware from one moment to the next.

The connection to the abstract concepts associated with ‘executive function’ should be obvious. The process of selecting models that resonate with patterns in the sensory input stream is directly related to what we experience as ‘attention’.

And this particular instance of the general principle (i.e., choosing by some mechanism the most appropriate models to be active at a given moment) determines the path(s) that our active thread(s) of conscious processing will follow.

That sure sounds like directed behavior to us, and the rest of it follows pretty cleanly. But there isn’t any active ‘executive’ anywhere to be seen; all of the decisions that determine that path are themselves predetermined.

Neural structures are naturally active, in a sense all clamoring for attention at the same time. We need elaborate feedback mechanisms at every level to control and organize the information hidden in the din, to focus on what’s important and ignore what’s not.

And of course, that mechanism is just another logical model, encapsulating the principles by which one active pattern is chosen over all others. Since that model changes when it’s accessed, the change is only reflected after the fact, on the next access.

That doesn’t mean we can’t exhibit non-deterministic or even random behavior, but the process by which it’s determined internally at any given instant is indeed deterministic, at least in neural terms.

But it does change the way we view our perception of our behavior and the impression we direct it. At the neural level, everything we do in the next instant is already expressed logically in the state of the relevant models.

The only reasonable question, then, is why those models seem to represent an incorrect evaluation of the situation when we observe the external manifestation of their internal operation.

The answer isn’t likely to be that there’s something out of whack with your frontal lobes; it’s pretty clear that they’re working just fine, or that thread of conscious awareness would fail. As long as you’re awake and aware (as Kay says it), your neural structures must be functioning in exactly the way the stored logical content dictates.

It’s the only trick they do, and if you take that away you lose a lot more than your focus on what to do next…


The two main methods for studying "what does what" in the brain are functional studies, and lesion studies. Yet they do not provide all the answers -- esp. where function or impairment is very subtle, non-declarative, not overtly behavioural, etc.
(grins) What if it’s so subtle there’s no external evidence of any kind? Is it still valid to think of it as impairment?


Minimal, but highly impacting deficits can be missed by Neuropsychological Testing. (Which is why I think a lot of Psychological Testing is questionable. I have seen grossly impairments in people be "missed" by ADHD/LD testing, including myself -- esp. if they have islands of high intelligence.)
Right, but there‘s a more important problem with all of these methods. Excepting the data that appears as a kind of gift in lesion studies, all of these methods require some up front assumptions about what you’re looking for, how to probe for it, and how it will be evidenced. And they all require a framework for interpretation, which encapsulates the original expectations.

Those expectations imposed on the situation wouldn’t be fatal if we were studying a wall, for example. External things like walls have a way of eventually smacking you in the face when your initial expectations are skewed.

And to be sure, we need those expectations to jumpstart the process of investigation, so you shouldn’t think anybody’s doing something wrong. The problem is not the expectations, nor how they’re applied, but the nature of the thing we’re trying to understand.

Walls don’t change their nature to match our expectations, but people do, if what we’re investigating is the operation of their brains. Worse yet, in some ways the brain is a lot like an independent entity, one that responds in a recognizable way to what it recognizes in the stimulus provided.

That response may not have anything to do with the way behavior is evidenced in other situations, but there is absolutely no way to see that in the data. If it were a wall, it would never smack you in the face, even if you incorrectly assumed it held a doorway, and tried to walk through it.

The process of recognizing how you perceive its nature would generate exactly the doorway you expect, which would exist as long as you expected it to be there.

(This probably sounds totally lame to some of y’all, and if it does, it’s likely the same problem we described in the original post. We all come with a pre-existing bias to avoid these issues.)

So how about a practical example? Here it is:

Over the last few years several new studies have firmed up the data indicating that cell phones don’t mix with driving. They’ve also backed up previous statistical studies that seem to indicate ADDers are at higher risk for accidents.

We know that these studies are flawed, for a particular reason that isn’t hard to describe. Basically, it stems from the fact that the recent studies have mainly been done on simulators.

That’s not in itself a problem, but in every case the researchers have incorrectly assessed the effect that working with a simulation has on the data. Something big and obvious is missing, and they don’t recognize it.

Every simulation used fails to convey one critical type of information in the way other vehicles are presented. No simulation attempts to convey the intent of the other drivers, easily discernable in the real world through subtle cues in the way a vehicle is operated.

Almost anybody involved with this sort of simulation would be hollerin’ right now, because this is exactly the sort of cue that they know is missing, what makes computer generated images of dynamic natural situations easy to detect as fake.

The problem is in the assumption that such information isn’t relevant, at least not to the extent that you can’t still squeeze a valid conclusion or two from the data. And in this case, that is exactly what the situation is; their assumptions have generated exactly the behavior that they expected to study, cooperatively provided by the brains of the subjects.

In the real world, we all rely heavily on those cues when we drive. We interpret the intent of other drivers (if we’re paying attention) by watching what they’re telling us by the way they’re controlling their vehicle. We’re seeing them communicate, and we use exactly the same faculties that allow us to interpret personal intent in another’s words.

If we’re lucky enough to have/be AD/HD, we can dramatically improve our survival skills by making maximum use of the information available, weaving a coherent model of other drivers’ reality that allows us to anticipate what they’re likely to do with remarkable precision.

If you think there might be a relationship between ADDers’ lack of attention, or focus, or whatever, perhaps some justification for the statistical data taken from insurance reports, you won’t find it in a simulator. The information we might lose sight of doesn’t exist, and we couldn’t pay attention to it if we tried.

In effect, the simulator testing has more to do with the way people can conform to the expectations of the experimenters, as revealed in the way the test is set up. The same problem exists for any kind of testing, which is one reason that lesion data, while sparse, seems much less ambiguous in important ways.


The fact that ADHD and/or ED and/or LDs can affect so many areas in some (and not others) is likely is one of the reasons why we see ADHDers and EDers and LDers (in various combinations) who all present so differently.
If you mean different areas of function, as evidenced in behavior, we’ll agree. But we’re talking about high-level, logically defined function here, not some area of the brain.

If we want to understand logically defined function, we need to look at how the logic is expressed, the mechanisms by which the appearance of function arises. In this view, the brain becomes a support system for the logical function, an engine by which various threads of logical operation may be expressed.

The operation of a particular area of the brain isn’t necessarily related in a direct, obvious way to the logical function that gives rise to behavior.

It’s a bit like asking a race team owner if his driver’s winning. Winning is logically defined; it certainly depends on things like the carburetor and brakes, but it also depends on the drivers ability, and attitude, how good the other teams racing today happen to be, and so on.

So you might be able to say definitively why you didn’t win, if, for example, the carburetor fails. But it’s not so easy to pinpoint what happens when you win.

The lesion data is a lot like a carburetor failing; most testing is less certain, and the more it focuses on logical properties like winning, the less you can point to any single underlying piece and definitively say how it contributes.

Crazy

I did. I Searched inside this forum (and Googled and Wikied outside it) for a couple of hours before starting this. I got to the limit of my attention. I tried to check myself for impulsivity before posting. I'm sure there are gems in the backlog, which is why I asked for specific directions to them.

humbly, --u

hi ... just out of idle curiosity - is there an answer to a specific question which you believe may be supplied through gaining more knowledge on EF?
Here's a link from previously ...

reference - was free back then - probably still - now:

http://www.addforums.com/forums/showpost.php?p=188118&postcount=35
From .. Executive Function in Typical and Atypical Development
Zelazo and Muller.
Handbook of child cognitive development (Chapter 20).
(2002).

... rather a big chap.
don't read it all :-) at once ... 'll give you some kinda' unpleasant digestive system complaint.

ps reference last referenced on http://www.addforums.com/forums/showpost.php?p=239586&postcount=164

'Aetiology of ADD' -
I think you may like that thread.

One of several which were closed down prematurely due to flame wars.

Worth a look - if only to see how a discussion can go off the rails.

EF is just kinda' calling a car a device which has windscreen wipers which can work when it rains. When they don't work - it's because they're afflicted with some disorder -

'wiped out'

I'm guess they'd call it -

WOHD

(hypoactivity disorder)

:-)

Now imagine that the windscreen is equipped with sensors which directly activate the wipers when necessary.
The somewhat erratic behaviour of the WOHDders is thereby shown to be - in a nice sense - 'better' - completely understandable - the wiper blades (they) - themselves going (more efficiently) about their wont in life ...
... AD(H)Der WOHDer crossover {{{alert}}} ...
... wont in life ...
performing the task which they were placed on the Earth to do.

Few would argue regarding the evolutionary success which man has exhibited.
Few would disagree that we're kinda' messing things up though.
Few could look us straight in the eye and state that they know why we bother (the meaning ...)
Few would adamantly state that we have not lost our way

... time for a change - I reckon
ADD represents a speciation event of man.
genus Homo sp. sapiens ->- neosapiens
... if only because of Neo's love for Trinity, Ducatti Monsters and lovely sunglasses.

Warning: controversial material ahead… (grins) whoa Nelly!!! So is not!
Don't tell me that you think we're gatherers in a hunter world? Or hunters in a gatherer world? Or hunter-gatherers in a silly world?

Funnily enough - on my first or so post here - I pretty much stated the above - thinking that I was being terribly original.
A certain forum member replied 'No - but it's an annoyingly popular perspective on ADD.'
How's that for a silent 'Hrummmfff' moment :-) ...

Can work the metaphor into all of these statements though ... JC the first (end to the military paradigm), Hartmann the second (I think) and the balance of the third attracts me - rather - but where we're hunter-gathering reality ->-
Few would adamantly state that we have not lost our way
Few could look us straight in the eye and state that they know why we bother (the meaning ...)
Warning: controversial material ahead… (grins) whoa Nelly!!! So is not!
OK- maybe a tad.
:-)

.............SB, you ask: hi ... just out of idle curiosity - is there an answer to a specific question which you believe may be supplied through gaining more knowledge on EF?................

Part of it is just that, idle curiosity. I didn't know there was such a thing as EF until quite recently, so learning about it is fun. (the steep places on learning curves are always the most fun --- for me). It's also interesting to start to see the world through other people's eyes/brains.

Part of it is that there are parts of me that I think I can call Executive DYSfunction that are making life difficult and frustrating. By learning about EF I hope to find a way around the parts that are in my path.

-u
p.s. I suppose that in 10,000 years or so we'll be able to look back and see if ADHD was an evolutionary break or not.

If you are looking to learn new stuff then this is a fine pursuit however in my opinion if you are looking for solutions then this is the long way around. Solutions are best found by looking directly at the problem you are having why isn't really that important if it can't be directly fixed by knowing. In the case of ADD the latter is closer to the truth. Understanding the EF will not improve say your lapse in short term memory nearly as efficiently as learning that a phone number obtained from information will need to be written down as you are receiving it in order for to be retained long enough for it to be used.


Executive functions are metaphor for certain brain functions.

Should you desire to continue the discussion I will be more than happy to share my thoughts on the matter however as a solution to struggles in life the best way is to specify the problem and look for ways to work around it as even the most up to date information will be of little use to finding solutions that make a difference in our every day life.

This is my personal opinion based upon my own experience with ADHD.

Or alternatively, you may want to read Thom Hartmann's book "Attention Deficit Disorder: A Different Perception" or run a Google search for the Hunter Brain Theory, and find out more about the theory that ADHD is the result of humans not having enough time to evolve out of hunter/gatherer mode :) and now being forced to live in a society of farmers. Its very interesting and makes loads of sense! Especially considering the fact that I know people with ADHD who were born long before modern technological advances. ;)

<!-- / message --><!-- controls --> I suppose that in 10,000 years or so we'll be able to look back and see if ADHD was an evolutionary break or not.

Or alternatively, you may want to read Thom Hartmann's book "Attention Deficit Disorder: A Different Perception" or run a Google search for the Hunter Brain Theory, and find out more about the theory that ADHD is the result of humans not having enough time to evolve out of hunter/gatherer mode :) and now being forced to live in a society of farmers. Its very interesting and makes loads of sense!
Unfortunately, Hartmann’s ideas are pretty much discredited. His stuff is a great example of how the appearance of consistency can work with a sense that the ideas strike a familiar chord to create a persistent illusion that the ideas must be correct.

Incidentally, ‘hunter – farmer’ is Hartmann’s own peculiar term. We believe he intended it to sound like the similar standard social anthropology term ‘hunter – gatherer’. They’re not the same thing, and technically, there is no support for Hartmann’s concept.

The cultural and social artifacts that he lumps together as contemporary facets of the life of early man aren’t really contemporary. The idea that there’s some failure to adapt isn‘t borne out by the record, or by the theory he purports to apply to justify it.

If we evolved, which is necessary to Hartmann’s argument, it’s entirely unlikely that we failed in some ways to respond to the forces at work, while getting it right in every other way. The theory says you can have your cake, but you have to eat the whole thing. If it works, there’s no reasonable way to propose it simultaneously fails.

* * * * *

We do this every once in a while, and I guess it’s time for the next iteration. The first time it came up, we spent some time digging, and the most interesting bit that popped up is this: Hartmann doesn’t have any relevant credentials. His previous work history is mainly as a C&W DJ.

The ‘licensing’ his bio blurb claims (in Massachusetts, if memory serves) turns out to be fairly bogus; if you check the public records, you’ll find he was registered for a short period of time as a non-certified counselor.

That turns out to be a sort of ‘we-know-he-exists-and-where-he-lives-but-that’s-all’ category, and doesn’t qualify him or license him in any way to do anything in particular. Registering doesn’t require any educational background or proof of expertise.

It’s mostly a way for the state to keep track of people that might owe taxes, and occasionally might do something that would raise a complaint. But it’s not something that I would want to put on a resume, if for no other reason than I might get asked to explain its significance. It really doesn’t have any.

I heard the guy talk several times back in the Nineties, and it was apparent his ideas were keyed to the way he wanted to perceive his son’s AD/HD. I believe if you look at the books, you’ll see the same slant carry through. And even back then, his rationale was full of logical holes, many that the interviewer caught.

There’s not really any science in it, and a lot of his stuff runs counter to established science which he surely knows about. So essentially he’s ignoring it, not a good sign.

On the positive side, he is reasonably consistent, and if all you need is a consistent framework, this might do for a while. But eventually you’re going to run into contradictions, and it will cease to be useful.

Our take is, why start with something that you’re going to discard? There are other ways to approach AD/HD out there, a lot of ‘em consistent, and most with less baggage weighing them down. Hallowell and Ratey are always a safe choice.

And for anyone out there still getting something positive out of Hartmann’s stuff, go for it. You know where to come when it crashes. (grins)


Especially considering the fact that I know people with ADHD who were born long before modern technological advances…
(grins, again) I can’t resist… these are people you know personally?

To be more serious, it’s reasonably certain that whatever causes AD/HD started peeking out at least five thousand years ago, give or take, coincident with (but no coincidence) the first glimmer of modern thought, what ultimately led to our current highly developed technological world.

So yeah, there were clearly some people that (for example) participated in the invention and introduction of written language, that you could properly call ADDers of a sort.

And by definition, they preceded modern technological advances, most of which depend in some way on being able to write stuff down…

I like the Hartmann patter because it is a way to describe ADHD which gets away from the "disorder" which needs to be "fixed" patter. It's one world inside these forums, but another one outside among the 92% of the population that are "normative brain"ers, like my loving and patient spouse. I think of it more as a parable than real hard science. If Thom is really presenting it as hard science then it seems to be a theory which is largely untested, and would require much more precise information about genetics and populations and ADD to really evaluate the theory.

This isn't my field, so I can just stick with the parable view, right or wrong.

Speaking of science, though, Stabile, how do "we" know about brain function 5,000 years ago, and whether brain function has been changing or not? Does this imply a field of paleoneurology? How do you do that? I'm always curious.....-u

Straight talk mead. That's great and I appreciate it. Yes, I am on a learning jag, but there are a few things I'd really like solutions for:

1) I'd like to be able to choose what I am going to focus on in advance -- set priorities and stick to them.
2) I'd like to be able to put down one multi-day project and pick up the next without spinning my wheels for WEEKS in between.

If you have general guidance toward solutions, I'd love to hear it.

One item that used to be on the list "I'd like to be able to focus" is now off the list, courtesy of Adderall. There are more things for the list, like being able to schedule my time, but I'm saving those for later.

... how do "we" ...how old are the oldest texts?

how old are the oldest cave paintings?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedas ->-

The Vedas are the main scriptural texts of Hinduism... and are a large corpus of texts originating in Ancient India.
The Vedas, regarded as śruti ("that which is heard"), form part of an oral tradition in the form of an ancient teacher-disciple tradition.
As per Hindu tradition the Vedas were 'revealed' to the Rishis referred to in the texts, not composed or written by them.
Even though many historians have tried to affix dates to the Vedas there is, as of yet, no common consensus as there is for the scriptures of other religions.
The Vedas are arguably the oldest surviving scriptures in the world.
As per Hindu tradition, the sage Vedavyasa divided the Vedas into Rig-Veda, Yajur-Veda, Sama-Veda and Atharva-Veda at the beginning of the Kali Yuga.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kali_Yuga ->-

Kalī Yuga (Age of Darkness)
[[[ending now methinks]]]
...is one of the four [the final] stages of development that the world goes through as part of the cycle of Yugas, as described in Hindu scriptures, the others being Dwapara Yuga, Treta Yuga, and Satya Yuga.

... an ADDer metaphor for speciation of man ...?...

we like the metaphor ... we do we do we do we do.

we do.

:-)

What do the Mayans say about 2012?
or Nostradamus?

Are we entering a strange time period in the life of the sun?

Is there possibly a true pattern hidden within the stars - which can predict speciation events?

Noting {3,4,13} applies universally.

ADD.

... how very neosapien.

:-)

Age of Darkness'bout time for mass enlightenment wouldn't some say.

... coupla' semantic layers to mass enlightenment.

Didn't hearty Hartmann write pretty much this in his book.

... URL to folow ...

ADDF p=336403&postcount=22
(http://www.addforums.com/forums/showpost.php?p=336403&postcount=22)
Originally Posted by kvrrd(Hartmann),Proscrire(Hartmann)
Hartmann wrote 'The Edison Gene', 2003. I have it in my hands.

His intro starts with an earthquake in India and his sharing a train ride with some Indian business men and a physician. He asks if they are familiar with types of people who crave stimulation, lack focus, hop from career to career or relationship to relationship, but the whole time they remain creative and inventive? They, the Indian men all nodded and agreed that they know this type well. These are old Karmic souls, nearing enlightenment. The purpose of reincarnation is to eventually free oneself from worldly entanglements and desires.

Incidentally ... enlightenment and friends gain definition under the Stabile architecture ...
data structure of mind
... as 'metamodel web'
- precise geometric formation of logical structures conspiring to generate an emergent structure which supports processes ->- yields mind of ADDer.

Think a mind which is untangled - internally consistent.
Initial observations might include freedom from the anxiety which is induced by resisting the urge to untangle mind.
'coz it's already untangled.

The rest - all the stuff about freedom from the 'bad stuff' - simply - an inevitable consequence of having an internally consistent mind.
Problem with losing one's attachment to the bad stuff - is that it can't just be done by magic ...

Develop mind ->- engineer a general metamodel web ->- enlightenment ->- anxiety, depression down ->- happiness up ->- desire for the bad stuff down.

Starting this whole scheme by plain abstention from the bad stuff is doomed to failure ... the desire remains.
... probably even grows.
Oi vey!!!
Backwards or sdrawkcab ... some would say - I would say.

Enlightenment doesn't arise through nailing our divining rods* to the floor.

*{bad stuff} divining rods.

:-)

1) I'd like to ...
2) I'd like to ... Without any opinion on either side - not a loaded question - might it be possible that your desire is being fuelled through belief that others are able to operate in this way?

My experience - we {{{adders}}} get into things ~real~ deep - often to the exclusion of all else.
Get right on in there ~so~ darned deep ... ... ...we're immersed in that other world - sometimes.

Might our depth of experience - much deeper than the people you believe to be able to tick the 'can do' box alongside attributes 1) and 2) - not counterbalance your perception of your failure to be able to perform well in these two areas.

Although we can be a little slow - at first - the increased depth we get down to - has a way - when it comes to repeating that basic theme - or to improvise a movement around that basic theme - our mode of thinking ~then~ ... comes into its own.

So - might be nice to place 1) and 2) into our inside pocket - and to pat them reassuringly -
but
...well...
... ... ... there *have* to be rules.

Get a whole buncha stuff - appear to lose a little - if it turns out that the little is a little to lot - we'll grow back the speed ...
... whilst maintaining the depth.

Evolution will find a way.

Like I wrote a while back - life was simpler back then - when we juggled 1) and 2) effortlessly ~whilst~ smoking a kipper ~whilst~ hopping boisterously on our middle leg -
but
(I ask you)
... could we ride a motorbike before we grew feet?

kinda' ... well

... no ... :-) ...

I like the Hartmann patter because it is a way to describe ADHD which gets away from the "disorder" which needs to be "fixed" patter. It's one world inside these forums, but another one outside among the 92% of the population that are "normative brain"ers, like my loving and patient spouse.
Right on; that’s one of the big contributors to the feeling it ‘fits’ somehow.

And to be fair (Warning: controversial material ahead, maybe) to Hartmann, most workable theoretical approaches that resolve this difficulty (i.e., explain how it simultaneously is and isn’t a disorder) require some extra help, usually in the form of new ways of understanding ourselves, or how we got here, or something similar depending on the way it’s stated.

So the seductive feel of Hartmann’s ideas also reflects the perfectly reasonable reluctance to accept that arbitrary addition. It’s a basic logical principle that if you can explain something without having to invent more new stuff, it’s better.

In other words, Occam’s razor. In this case, the Hartmann perspective suffers from too little information, and his ideas represent a kind of local minimum that’s ‘fooling’ our sense of ‘steepest-descent-to-the-best-answer-possible’ analysis into thinking we’re really there.

It happens a lot, in many different disciplines, and it’s getting exponentially more common lately. In some areas it’s not too hard to see what’s needed to ‘kick’ the solution out of that local minimum and start back down to wards the real answer.

That doesn’t mean the kick is ever applied; one of the current problems involves perception, and how we model reality. Recognizing how the problem was solved previously and that it should be tried again aren’t necessarily both at hand in the neural structures that store information in our heads.

In our particular area recognizing how we did it last time is tougher than, say, the problems facing theoretical physicists. The last time we faced this particular problem, h. Sapiens hadn’t been invented. So the only example of the trick necessary isn’t sitting around in memory to apply…


I think of it more as a parable than real hard science. If Thom is really presenting it as hard science then it seems to be a theory which is largely untested, and would require much more precise information about genetics and populations and ADD to really evaluate the theory.
Right, and that’s how you should take it. He does clearly expect followers to believe there’s a real difference that is related to our peculiar adaptation, or failure to adapt. In that sense, he’s presenting it as something that automatically comes under the umbrella of science. And in those terms, it fails to satisfy.

The problem here is that applying the perspective Hartmann’s ideas suggest without buying the supposed theoretical cause leaves one with no way to justify trusting the basis of the solutions. To use the methods, you would need to create a wall between your natural inquisitive nature and the context of Hartmann’s ideas.

Unless you’re an ADDer, that is. It’s always cracked us up to see how the unique perspective granted by having/being AD/HD allows the ADDer to adapt to that sort of wrinkle in a conceptual scheme like Hartmann’s.

It’s almost as if we can look at the entire context, not just the specific ideas, and see that there are some problems over in that area. But if we can also see that the methods have some positive benefit despite, figuring out solutions to those problems can wait.

And note that they don’t cause us any problems because of lack of faith in the method. Quite the opposite; we can ‘see’ the solution space broadly enough that we gain a kind of exterior perspective on the whole, giving us a direct way to evaluate what might happen if we apply the principles suggested by the basic (presumably partially incorrect) ideas.

Now for the twisty part:

That capability can be studied, and qualified, and we’ve done that. It’s related to differences in how we store and access information in our brains. And in the case of Hartmann’s ideas, being able to do that would likely preclude making the mistakes he’s fallen prey to.

So at the root, our impulse to reject Hartmann’s ideas doesn’t have anything to do with whether some of his techniques might be helpful. Instead, they’re a kind of xenophobia, the same impulse that arises when normals are put off by us ADDers.

If he can’t think like an ADDer, why should we listen to his ideas? Why shouldn’t we suspect them as harboring a hidden agenda? The answer lies in extending that global view until it encompasses the reasons that Hartmann himself might feel unable to express himself in the way we expect.

That includes him ignoring the applicable existing science, particularly the fairly well documented data about the history of the rise of agrarian social groups. He ignores lots more than that, but it’s a good place to start, because it shoots holes in his fundamental arguments.

There’s no evidence that the propensity to hunt (and the innate talent to thrive by expressing it) conflicts with the innate talents required to thrive in an agrarian context.

All the evidence we know of shows exactly the opposite; even early in cultures that survived on a mix of hunting and gathering activities, the choice of which activity to pursue at a particular moment was dictated entirely by circumstance. There isn’t any particular division of labor evident in the archeological record, by gender or any other measure. Anyone that could hunt, hunted, when it was appropriate; anyone that could gather, did that.

Lot’s of people persistently ignore that picture, including some scientists. The most common error is assuming that females were relegated to sticking around the homestead, pursuing the more genteel activities (like gathering) and taking care of the kiddies.

Nothing in the record supports that particular view, and it’s clear that many of the advantages that allow women to pursue that sort of role arose only after relatively sophisticated agriculture became common and we started to stay put, near where our stuff grows.

That was right about the same time the rest of our modern techie society started to evolve, a bit before the introduction of written language. So there’s a potential connection to AD/HD there, too, and one that may in fact be differentiated by gender, at least in part.


This isn't my field, so I can just stick with the parable view, right or wrong.
(grins) Not a problem, and I hope we’re beginning to get the reasons across. If we are, then there also should be no problem with us saying ‘you know where to come if it crashes’.

If we’re not getting most of it across, well, we apologize in advance for any misunderstanding. Please don’t take it the wrong way, because we really meant no disrespect for any individual’s solutions, quite the opposite, in fact.

And still feel free to use the forums when it fails to satisfy completely…


Speaking of science, though, Stabile, how do "we" know about brain function 5,000 years ago, and whether brain function has been changing or not? Does this imply a field of paleoneurology? How do you do that? I'm always curious.....-u
Hey, SB and Tammy, did you hear that? ‘Paleoneurology’; you’ve got to love it…

(I should say the ‘we’ often means my wife and I; Tom and Kay == Stabile.)

It is a good question, though; how do you determine how anyone is using their brain, let alone someone who’s been dust for several thousands of years?

The answer lies in what exactly you want to know, specifically about modes of thinking, and in our case what we’re interested in is the logical structure of the information stored in your neurons.

What’s more, we can restrict our curiosity to one feature of the way information is structured, and for the most part only how it compares to a slightly different form.

Then, it’s just a puzzle. If you look at something like written language, you can ask relatively simple questions: What feature of the idea was novel? Why didn’t it arise thousands of years previous to its first permanent appearance? If it was intermittently discovered before, why didn’t it ‘take’?

It turns out that to invent written language you need to make a connection between at least two abstract concepts, the idea that symbols can be representative, and the idea that a use exists for a system that represents information in a publicly accessible, more-or-less permanent way.

That connection seems trivial to us today, but it shares a common element with stuff that likely seems not nearly as simple, even if you do something like particle physics for a living. Those elements occupy different metamodels, a kind of conceptual model that either explicitly of implicitly includes information about a logical property known as relative metalevel.

One feature of metamodels is that individually they may seem easy to access (i.e., think about), but if you store them in what we call a flat form, a curious thing happens: your ability to think about one model while simultaneously thinking about some aspect of the other may be severely hampered, even impossible.

It’s possible to transcend that flat form by building a kind of logical bridge to link them, but it requires a significant effort, and the bridge is necessarily a temporary structure for technical reasons.

Nevertheless, it’s not too difficult to bring back the perspective suggested by the view before the bridge collapses, and if you’re private about the effort, nobody will notice that you’re being abnormal in your thinking. Such a perspective can be significant, encompassing a new idea that has the power to change your world.

If you store information in flat structures, as the earliest examples of our species certainly did, there’s a name for that new idea: a paradigm. It’s really just another metamodel, one that incorporates features of the two that were temporarily bridged.

And it’s a good thing, too. If it weren’t a single model, you’d need another bridge to access the concept, so you could apply it. Again, for technical reasons, that’s not going to happen, not in any stable way, and people that persistently think in such a way are ostracized or otherwise sanctioned simply because that instability is perceived as a threat to the group.

What can’t be hidden, if the new paradigm ‘sticks’, are the metarelationships that bind the different pieces of the two original metamodels together. So as long as the idea still exists, we really can do a kind of forensic paleoneurology on it and tell precisely how the originator had to think to create it.

That, in turn, can reveal quite a bit about the operation of his/her brain; I haven’t lost sight of the fact we’re freely intermixing ‘thinking’ with ‘neurons firing’, and some details of that link must be established as well if we’re to get anything useful out of the exercise.

Fortunately, what we need to know about neural structures to relate them to the way information is stored isn’t too difficult to work out, and part of our study of persistent anomalies in human communication involved doing just that. But we’ll leave talking about the details for a different day, I think.

Ultimately, any important concepts we can see in the historical record can be thought of as a sort of ‘logical fossil’, as long as all we want to know is how much the logical property relative metalevel contributed to its structure. And in turn, we know something about how the originator(s) must have stored information, and accessed it, and something about how the other members of the group that adopted it after the fact must have used their brains as well.

* * * * *

What we see in the historical record is the initial appearance of evidence of the use of relative metalevel to do these ‘tricks’ at about the time of the introduction of written language, with some archeological evidence that suggests isolated, limited examples for some time before, mainly in the way some tools and weapons were developed and adapted.

Once the ‘trick’ of using relative metalevel to build temporary logical ‘bridges’ became common, the proto-technological advantage it conferred spread like wildfire, slowly at first but bursting out once it reached a certain critical mass.

That spread closely follows the rise of modern civilization, another story that doesn‘t need telling right now. But it likely is the reason for the apparent exponential acceleration of the pace of technical innovation, and that acceleration itself likely foretells something interesting about what’s happening in our heads.

I should be clear that there are several reasons to expect that the appearance of the ability to apply relative metalevel in this way represents an evolutionary advance of our mental abilities. The faculty required is well known to ADDers, what we refer to as ‘multithreading’ or sometimes ‘multitasking’.

The essential feature is the ability to support two or more simultaneous threads of logical processing, each representing a thread of conscious awareness. (There are important implications of that we’ll only note and address at a later time, if anyone’s interested.)

The development of the required supporting neural structures has a much longer story, of course. We can idntify two different modes of operation of the brain; in one, we have a simpler neural organization capable of supporting a single thread of conscious awareness, and this is all that’s required to store complex abstract information in separate, flat logical structures.

In the other, we see the more complex neural organization required to support multiple simultaneous threads of conscious awareness. This is precisely the capability required to support the perception of the logical property relative metalevel. We store a memory of the experience, and the information describing the metarelationship automatically becomes a part of the stored complex abstraction.

The only reasonable assumption is that the more complex structures developed after the successful introduction of the simpler structures. If it turns out this difference is related to AD/HD, as we hypothesize, it implies that we represent an evolutionary advance over the branch of the species that consistently applies the older, flat methods of storing information.

Based on a peculiar property of the history of this capability (it’s emergent), the most likely scenario is that we’re experiencing a speciation event similar in nature to the one that gave rise to h. Sapiens, likely to split us off entirely from the previous branch.

So you can appreciate what I meant when I said Hartmann’s views require fewer brash new assumptions, and might seem attractive for that reason if nothing else.

In this case, though, Occam’s razor actually favors our models, even though they seem more complex on the surface. The simplicity comes when they’re applied; Hartmann’s ideas only take you so far before they run into serious difficulty, requiring either complex patches or a goodly dose of outright denial.

In contrast, we’ve so far been unable to break our models, no matter what we or anyone else has thrown at ‘em. You’re welcome to take a shot, it you see something that seems out of whack.

* * * * *

There is a way to do all this without the need for extraordinary measures like temporary logical bridges, and that is, oddly enough, to use bridges themselves to store information. A bridge is a dual with the places it links; by definition, its existence implies the places linked, and if you have its description, you can recreate many of the important features of what would be at either end.

So with a little time, you can generate an internal data store that consists almost entirely of the bridges between metamodels, the relationships that define their respective relative nature. Most metamodels are related to many others, for any reasonably complex representation. Weave enough of these together, and what you get is a single, coherent web.

There are many interesting features of such a web of metamodels, and one is that the technical instabilities mentioned previously no longer exist. A web-like structure is more robust than multiple flat structures, for obvious reasons; everything props up everything else, and it’s very hard to tear any single piece of the whole down without destroying the entire structure.

Because a web is inherently stable, many of the cues that would set off the alarms of others are muted, to the point that thinking in this way may only occasionally cause others to feel uncomfortable. It’s still a problem, of course, but that inherent stability helps with that, too.

Where all this helps us personally with out own ADD is in the way it allows us to smooth out wrinkly areas of that web. Essentially, we can find many of the mistaken concepts that can make life with ADD miserable by simply looking for things that don’t fit nicely with the rest of what we know.

This isn’t just a different way of saying we look for inconsistencies, but a different kind of inconsistency. Any part of the web implies a uniform, related structural shape for any other part, and that presents a new way of judging truth.

The requirement of fitting precisely into the whole in a harmonious way is a much more powerful test of the quality of an idea than mere consistency, and that alone makes it much easier to reject stuff that sticks out at odd, inconsistent angles.

That describes quite a few of the details of living from day-to-day that particularly torture us ADDers, so while it doesn’t always suggest a better way, it certainly tells you where to stand to avoid the rain.

The rest, I expect, will come…

Stabile said, some time back: "...That is, they would like to identify the differences between AD/HD brains and Normal brains..."

...which has another use besides pure science, IMHO. There's always "self-defense".

Psychological difficulties such as posttraumatic stress disorder and ADD and nervous system problems like chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia are all subject to the very real and infuriating problem of disbelief in the wider world.the problem of disbelief isn't just annoying, it can make diagnosis and treatment very difficult, and lead to associated problems like loss of employment, marriage breakup, and a host of others.

The Executive Function research, whether or not it's definitive, provides long-suffering pre-diagnosis ADDers like me with brightly colored pictures to show to friends and relatives, so they will stop saying "you could do it if you really wanted to". After 50 years of really wanting to, and yet not doing, having a brightly colored picture of PET scans to point them to is extremely helpful.

I realize that using preliminary research or incomplete research in this manner is not entirely satisfactory, but not being able to get help or support is also not entirely satisfactory.

Glad to be here,

Ducky

Stabile said, some time back: "...That is, they would like to identify the differences between AD/HD brains and Normal brains..."

...which has another use besides pure science, IMHO. There's always "self-defense".

Psychological difficulties such as posttraumatic stress disorder and ADD and nervous system problems like chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia are all subject to the very real and infuriating problem of disbelief in the wider world. The problem of disbelief isn't just annoying, it can make diagnosis and treatment very difficult, and lead to associated problems like loss of employment, marriage breakup, and a host of others.

The Executive Function research, whether or not it's definitive, provides long-suffering pre-diagnosis ADDers like me with brightly colored pictures to show to friends and relatives, so they will stop saying "you could do it if you really wanted to". After 50 years of really wanting to, and yet not doing, having a brightly colored picture of PET scans to point them to is extremely helpful.

I realize that using preliminary research or incomplete research in this manner is not entirely satisfactory, but not being able to get help or support is also not entirely satisfactory.

Glad to be here,

Ducky
Yeah, but. The ‘executive’ stuff is completely wrong, not just “preliminary… or incomplete research”. Whatever those pretty pictures show, it isn’t what they say it is.

It is true that we face a problem with disbelief, but the reason isn’t the same as most of the rest of the problems you mention. We literally think differently, in a way that sets off alarms in normals (and in ourselves as well, a whole ‘nother problem).

These alarms are associated with the collection of drives, impulses and behavioral templates we refer to as ‘the social impulse’. The social impulse is what drives us to form groups, but it is entirely consumed with keeping the way members of the group think within strict limits.

Nothing like PTSD, chronic fatigue syndrome or fibromyalgia. The way normals fail to appreciate these is bad enough, but ADDers live on an entirely different level of discrimination.

It’s true that anything that helps keep normals’ instincts at bay can be seen as a useful tool, but some tools are more dangerous than others. Trying to slip by and excuse our differences on the basis of false and misleading information is a dangerous, slippery slope.

Example: Inner city residents tend to be disproportionately poorer than the general population; they also tend to disproportionately represent certain racial profiles and/or national origins. Put that little set of facts together with certain (widely and definitively discredited) research by a former Harvard professor, and it might seem tempting to say, “OK, that makes sense.”

Nothing could be further from the truth, of course; there are reasons that these facts appear to be correlated, but none of them have to do with any common underlying causative factors, other than the pure fact of people’s existence: everyone has to be somewhere.

ADDers have to be somewhere, too, and in the long run it won’t help us as a group to depend on misleading and incorrect information to help allay discrimination. The effects of discrimination are problems of the individual, but the solutions are only found in addressing the group as a whole. That’s exactly why it can be such a difficult problem.

None of the AD/HD researchers trying to misapply the idea of an ‘executive’ are acting in our best interests, no matter how sincere they might be, no matter how nice and caring each might be individually.

What we need is group identity, like that Andrew and the rest of the founding members sought when the forums were created. In the words of Dr. Zoidberg, Who’s the smart guy now, Vinnie? Is it Barclay or Big?

Welcome to the forums, BTW. You’re sure in the right place…

--T&K

1) I'd like to be able to choose what I am going to focus on in advance -- set priorities and stick to them.

2) I'd like to be able to put down one multi-day project and pick up the next without spinning my wheels for WEEKS in between.



1) what sort of priorities are you referring to long term of every day stuff they would have very different approaches {IMHO)



2) Why do you spin your wheels for week in between

You do not really want to do the project

You do not know where you left off

You do not know how to pick it back up again

You get distracted

or disinterested

does perfection stand in your way or simply general scatter.


THIS is the BIGGEST e problem I have with the executive function issue. It prevents us from addressing the real important question. Many just think I can't stick with a multiple day project because I have dysfunctional executive functions This executive function dysfunction because the reason why we can't do the thing we want what really open these doors is not some medical theory or body part scape goat of the year {if in doubt just type in executive function dysfunction and see all the conditions they blame on EF = there is cat poop on the carpet some where maw/

What is going to get us moving in a productive direction is asking your self honest questions and feeling free to honestly look for the whats and why that prevent us from doing the thing we want to accomplish. chances are many people suffer from "should a be box syndrome" meaning you are under the mistaken impression you gotta do life like ever one else and you keep trying to conform your self to some one else's idea of how life should be instead of see the different way you can conform to life according to who you are. . . .I was a very lucky little girl in that I was born to a mother who understood how to work with who I was instead of trying to shove me into what she thought I should be.

I learned early how to work with my wiggles and inability to sit still Is Barkley going to teach you that in his talks about how screwed up your brain is? Even if he mentions some helpful tips they are standardized and not tailor made for you = you try these systems he talks about it feels like uncomfortable like you are wearing some one else's shoes and their foot is not even the same size Due to the discomfort you gradually forgot about the wonderful systems and in the end figuring YOU are just simply too dysfunctional to be capable. When the entire time is is simply that the system was NOT designed around who you are so it felt like you were wearing some one else's shoes because you were. I say I am lucky because I never had to go through that at home.

Yes I went through it out in the NTer world just like we all do but at home I was accepted and not looked down upon because I was different. I was taught there are certain limits in what is right and wrong and I was taught how to tell the difference. . . . I was taught I was expected to give school my best effort but when it was discovered I did not learn like the other children the educational system told my I was retarded my mom believed them to be full of feces . . . she had me tested and it was found there was nothing wrong with my IQ I am dyslexic. . .I still am . . .my mother tried various way to help me learn to read. I never got phonetics and many word still look like other word like was and saw. . .pots and post snakes ands snakes = I learn to read in context. . . . now the system my mother used to teach me out a a faith in that I could and would learn all she had to do was figure out how my brain worked instead of seeing me as screwed up she saw me as just being different and to her that was okay as long as I learned to read I could learn how ever I wanted.

This small lesson is why I see thing the way I do and yes my difference in brain chemistry causes some clashed with society but not because I am some inferior being with a screwed up brain. I take medications because the NTer world may not change in my life time and I do have to function in it to a certain extent which doesn't come naturally for me. I have to pay my housing utilities and do so in a way that is productive and not harmful to thees but HOW I go about this is up to me and society will not dictate to me how my life should be run. I earn money I give it away just like I am supposed to. If I want to paint a big blue boat in my living room because it is too cold out side then I should just be sure and put plenty of plastic down unless I want to buy a new carpet and have plenty of ventilation so I do not get sick from the paint fumes. If I want to wash dished, then scrub the tub then vacuum the living room then why not do it that way. The bath tub doesn't care it is cleaned after the mirror or the dishes if yo mange to scrub it on a regular basis it will remain clean Again it doesn't matter if I do clean it after vacuuming the living room floor or scrubbing the toilet. . . in many cases the order doesn't matter as much as the frequency I was allowed to learn in this manner most of my childhood as long as school got passed and my chores were done. I think my mom saved me a lot of heart ache and time by simply accepting me as me and teaching me it was okay NOT to be like every one else.

You know Albert Einstein was not like every one else neither was Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Edison I would venture to say these people were different and our society is better off because they were different than every one else. . .another way to look at ADD beyond executive functions dysfunction that are basically dysfunctional as far as I am concerned. . Then again I was reared much differently than most people that I have met were another f=difference I am grateful for/

It is true that we face a problem with disbelief, but the reason isn’t the same as most of the rest of the problems you mention. We literally think differently, in a way that sets off alarms in normals (and in ourselves as well, a whole ‘nother problem).


Ahh stabile found some thing you might enjoy it is about evolution and hierarchy (http://intqhc.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/mzi060v2.pdf) It places turf war medical behavior right where it should be = in the past the "old way" as SB would say.

Psychological difficulties such as posttraumatic stress disorder and ADD and nervous system problems like chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia are all subject to the very real and infuriating problem of disbelief in the wider world.the problem of disbelief isn't just annoying, it can make diagnosis and treatment very difficult, and lead to associated problems like loss of employment, marriage breakup, and a host of others.


Are these thing you experienced youself. If so I am sorry but not every one's ADD causes these things.

How about when treatment ends a marriage and creates loss of employment because before I was in some comfortable box where I would be a good little trooper. Treating my ADD caused things to change for me but the change did not appear beneficial in the short term. Only when the long term is taken into account can the treatment {this includes non medical approaches} be seem as a positive effect.

When any thing changes there is some temporary shifting around which may be uncomfortable at first. When my belief about ADD changed from one of disorder to one of neurodiversity again the =initial effect was tremoilious only in the long term are the positive aspect seem maybe it is the same with being ADD?

Isimply can to phantom executive functions causing ADD, autism, bipolar, thankfully they found an MRI signature for genetic dyslexia or the EF would be blamed for that too. Oddly enough being dyslexic via venture of genetic = my brain is supposed to work this way according to the stuff I have briefly read {I am still researching the area} I may actually be using the parts of my brain that are supposed to be dysfunctional due to me being ADD to compensate for my processing difference - right prefrontal cortex if I am remembering correctly {hot dog I do remember right too}*Department of Psychology, Stanford University, (http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/104/10/4234.pdf?ck=nck)


Among these regions, the left IFG has often been reported to exhibit hyperactivation in dyslexia (13–16, 33). The hyperactivations occurred in multiple components of a frontostriatal–thalamic network often associated with working memoryand attention (45). Thus, these hyperactivations could reflectgreater working memory resources being recruited to support
phonological processing when posterior language regions fail to
support such processing because of immaturity (readingmatched control group) or dysfunction (dyslexic group
***End quote

Now I just scanned this briefly but I knew I had read it before. Now my question for those executive function proponents if my EF is screwed up because I am hyperactive ADD then how is it I am able to compensate for my dyslexia using the same brain areas Barkley and others claim is screwed up ?


The Executive Function research, whether or not it's definitive, provides long-suffering pre-diagnosis ADDers like me with brightly colored pictures to show to friends and relatives, so they will stop saying "you could do it if you really wanted to". After 50 years of really wanting to, and yet not doing, having a brightly colored picture of PET scans to point them to is extremely helpful.

Wow umm rarely run across any one that has been dealing with their ADD longer than I have meaning I am usually one of the older members s a discussion. I am at the 40 year mark and I do not have friends who are unsupportive of me, If they can not believe me when I say I am trying harder then I have no interest in having any relationship with them .

The relative thing well I describe my rearing in the post. above My differences were noticeable at an early age but my ADD wasn't diagnosed until I was an adult. My mother believed me when I told her I was trying as hard as I could when I was six. I am sorry not every one was so fortunate. . . . I was saved a lot of grief but in reality the problem isn't as much the ADD as the treatment you are enduring because you are different. . . . this is what is sad.

I fully understand why you as a person choose to utilize what was available I probably would have done the same but I am looking at the bigger picture The purest meaning behind your post. Why should you have to have some pretty pictures so your differences can be accepted by people who love you? I am like saddened because you have to go through that but this "requirement" of proof to what should be obvious to loved ones = you are different and some things that come naturally to them do not come naturally to you. . . is what makes no sense to me.

The bottom line here for ADDers as a group is why should millions like me walk around believing their brain is screwed up because their brain functions differently? So society can feel better about their screwed up logic and poor tolerance of diversity? I have to agree with Stabile on this one Is it really screwed up and totally illogical to believe we should all functioning the same manner and it is an increase in diversity tolerance that is going to be the most beneficial to man kind as a whole with this including those of us who are neurodiverse.

Now I must wiggle my hinny must exit this chair as the sitting is beginning to hurt.

... the 'social impulse' (in action)

... from c~f (with ramen)
~s~ (http://www.addforums.com/forums/showpost.php?p=469412&postcount=87)

Quote:Originally Posted by c~f
We are Fighting Dreamers seeking for high dream

Quote:Originally Posted by from earlier in that thread
- these guys [the Fighting Dreamers] (seeking something better) eliciting an automatic adverse reaction in 'the others (the machine)' ...

called -> :-)

Quote:Originally Posted by Stabile
~s~ (above)
:-) -> ‘the social impulse’. The social impulse is what drives us to form groups, but it is entirely consumed with keeping the way members of the group think within strict limits.

__________________

the social impulse?
the antisocial impulse?

view from the cheap seats ?or? the 'Gods'
... ... doncha' just know (though) that the cheap seats'll be up alongside the Gods, when this peace hits the theatre of ~our~ collective consciousness.

evolution and hierarchy (http://intqhc.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/mzi060v2.pdf)

->-

'that culture change is the solution to health care’s ills.'

-*-

I'll have whichever search engine the fast lady over there's usin'

::----)))))))))))))

... zoom!

I have to agree with Stabile on this one Is it really screwed up and totally illogical to believe we should all functioning the same manner and it is an increase in diversity tolerance that is going to be the most beneficial to man kind as a whole with this including those of us who are neurodiverse.

The key to my absolute agreement on all of the above lies in abstracting {you,me,I,oneself,us,man} out from the equation.
Here's the deal - some clever chap didn't poke the first mind (as we know them ->-into skull-<- of man)
- and similarly - some really clever chap didn't poke the first ADD mind into the first ADDer's head (with a stick) -

... all of which means that we need to seek a rationale for all of ~this~ - with energetically favourable basis.

Not really good enough to look through our eyes at 'mind' (or at least its genesis)
- necessary instead to look for the underlying basis
to ?why? 'stuff does stuff' and then to work out whether mind (as stuff :-) can be stuffed into the 'why stuff does stuff' rule)

- necessary instead to look for the underlying basis
where the solution 'just plain because'
just plain don't can't got no place in that solution box
labelled
Solution (::clue:: insert this word -> 'physics' <- in the box below).

and you're there.

-*-

It ~all~ makes sense.
And that'd be it (really) - because nothing need make sense -
because sense is 'artefact' of mind - or seized upon by mind - which was seized upon by brain for shocking reasons of electric thunder blue.

:-)

&
Silje Nergaard
'How am I supposed to see the stars?'

1 3 4 13

Quote:Stabile (above)
‘... the social impulse’. The social impulse is what drives us to form groups, but it is entirely consumed with keeping the way members of the group think within strict limits.

~explains~

Quote:Tammy (above)
‘I'd rather be hated for what I am, than loved for what I am not.'

-*-

{Social,Antisocial} impulse'd be defined based on whether you're 'them' or 'us' - that is prior to seeing through the ruse - and immediately thereafter realising that there are no 'others' ... ...
meaning that 'them and us' don't exist as separate groupings
~resulting~
in the impulsive Social guy losing her Antisocial tendencies.

-*-

Attention:
Your brain is attempting to take liberties.
Your mind is about to kick your brain's head in.

hmmm...

:-)

~ADD~ style headaches :faint:

'whatever will we do?'

meadd823 asked, " ...Are these thing you experienced youself. If so I am sorry but not every one's ADD causes these things. .."

I'm sorry, I should have made myself more clear. Luckily, I think I only have the ADD and a merest taste of PTSD which has a perfectly normal explanation in the real world.

I was just using this list of syndromes as examples of problems which are difficult to prove to the people around you. In the absence of x-rays and CAT scans and biochemical tests with little strips of paper turning color, it's extraordinarily difficult to demonstrate the reality of diseases and conditions which are mainly distinguished by their interference with thought and perception or their unwarranted production of pain. that was all I was trying to do.

Ducky

{Social,Antisocial} impulse'd be defined based on whether you're 'them' or 'us' -
I spied that with my little Ninja eye immediately. "Them or Us" is something that needs to be, and I accept it in others for the lack that it represents...but by no means do I embrace it. That is not my nindo.



A ninja must see through deception.

I am so glad I took that break and paid the electricity bill. For a mo or so? I was afraid that lightbulb wasn't gonna come on! :faint:



that is prior to seeing through the ruse - and immediately thereafter realising that there are no 'others' ... ...
meaning that 'them and us' don't exist as separate groupings

Lightbulb! Lightbulb!


Oh there you are. :) See better now?



~resulting~
in the impulsive Social guy losing her Antisocial tendencies.
Gaara phoned. He said he's ready to talk whenever you are available. ;)


Attention:
Your brain is attempting to take liberties.
Your mind is about to kick your brain's head in.

hmmm...

:-)

~ADD~ style headaches :faint:

'whatever will we do?'

Wanna go see how much chakra we'll need to concentrate in the soles of our feet in order to walk on water? :D

We can take our EF, or leave them on the side of the path on the way down there.

t's extraordinarily difficult to demonstrate the reality of diseases and conditions which are mainly distinguished by their interference with thought and perception or their unwarranted production of pain. that was all I was trying to do.

... be great to have an infallible lie detector test - all that matters is whether the individual is hurt - regardless of whether another would be similarly hurt in similar circumstance.
Tyranny of covert operation of mind.

the social impulse?
the antisocial impulse?
One becomes the other with frightening rapidity at some ’threshold of strangeness’ that varies from one individual to the next.

Conquering that threshold is likely the significant sociopolitical challenge for the next generation or two. I ‘spect we’ll win in the end, given that we ADDers tend to be determined-to-look-at-the-really-big-picture types.

Big pictures and narrow-minded limits don’t get along very well…

all that matters is whether the individual is hurt I know that :)....come here (http://www.addforums.com/forums/showpost.php?p=469475&postcount=88)...mi chakra es su chakra.

My parents have the executive function in their brains...

They don't cease to wonder how I didn't get it :p

I sure wish I could dance like that

but you are

:-)

I was just using this list of syndromes as examples of problems which are difficult to prove to the people around you. In the absence of x-rays and CAT scans and biochemical tests with little strips of paper turning color, it's extraordinarily difficult to demonstrate the reality of diseases and conditions which are mainly distinguished by their interference with thought and perception or their unwarranted production of pain. that was all I was trying to do.

Oh good I was beginning t o think you were residing in hell and life had just fallin apart on you and here I come with an opinion. . . .

I can assure you that not all people’s ails are “ provable” with litmus paper. Heart aches can not be measured any more than “do the best you can” I would venture to say most of man ids ails can not be measured or readily seen like a missing limb. I mean if they can say the problems are caused by you not trying hard enough and refuse to acknowledge other wise with out proof via pretty pictures then I would relieve my self of the entire frustration by asking them first to prove their claim that you are not trying as hard as you can.

It is illogical to believe that by using mere external observation I could know more about some ones internal reality than they themselves do, People who want absolute proof you are experiencing reality exactly as you claim you are confuse me.

Those who claim I simply need to try harder annoy me because of how I perceive such claims.

First they are insinuating I am soo ****ing stupid that I failed to have tried that before they suggested it

Second – most are not asking me to try harder to be the best I can be They are telling me to try harder to live up too their expectations –

Third they expect me to be more like them which is another confusion in logic why would I want to be

The final straw is the lack of consideration for me as a person in my own right. I would interpretation this is not giving a crap about me because number 1,2, and 3 is all about them . . . having nothing to so with me.

My up bringing saved me a lot of heart ache and my families acceptance of me both before and after my ADD treatment must be some sort of rare gift. I read a lot of things like what you write Unfortunately my experience with in my own family seems to be more of the exception when it really should be the rule.


Diversity acceptance is what needs to change. If medical science is simply going to play along then they need to stop claiming to be objective. If they are objective then they would be willing to openly admit they do not really know.

re: Thom Hartmann's theory of ADD as being a Hunter type vestigial characteristic left over from evolution
That is an interesting theory.

I'll take it further on one note

re: Hunters & Gatherers
I have OFTEN wondered if "compulsive shopping" (a Form of Hunting and GATHERING) is r/t some vestigial leftover behaviour from evolution, too.

For those unfamiliar with evolution (thanks to evolution being removed from the school biology curriculum's in some places, etc) -- this link is more about vestigial traits than vestigial behaviours, but you get the general idea.

Some old adaptation features that we had (and no longer need) have remained behind in us and our fellow creatures.

(Now if it wasn't for that Gathering (er, shopping) causing so many problems, such as Credit Card bills -- it might not be such a bad thing. <G>

http://www.originsoflife.org/vestigialtraits.php

re: 22 (disbelief of certain illnesses by the public)

We can't all be neuroscientists.

Haven't you noticed that the "non believers" are often uneducated folks -=or=- pompous folks who pretend to know everything?

They cannot tolerate ambiguity, and must have Yes or No answers. :)

The most BRILLIANT scientists and doctors and professors that I have ever met and studied under, have NO problem with saying: "you know what? we [the science community] don't know [yet?]".

Mechanisms that destroy the body/mind/health via dysfunction are just beginning to be understood.

There is also a lot of denial of stress-related illness. People think it will lead to blame. (Rather, it can lead to understanding, and learning to become aware of the Self and strengthen the Self's resources.)

For a better explanation of how stress affects health, I'd really recommend Gabor Mate's book called: The Body Says No

He talks about interpersonal and social factors in ALS, MS, IBS, Cancers, and several other illnesses.

One part of his book examines a Cleveland Clinic study entitled: "Why are ALS patients all so Nice?" (And ofcourse, they are "nice": to everyone, but themselves! The study found that they don't set boundaries, and the stress is probably part of the factors involved in destroying their nerve and immune system.

re: Thom Hartmann's theory of ADD as being a Hunter type vestigial characteristic left over from evolution
That is an interesting theory.

I'll take it further on one note

re: Hunters & Gatherers
I have OFTEN wondered if "compulsive shopping" (a Form of Hunting and GATHERING) is r/t some vestigial leftover behaviour from evolution, too.

For those unfamiliar with evolution (thanks to evolution being removed from the school biology curriculum's in some places, etc) -- this link is more about vestigial traits than vestigial behaviours, but you get the general idea.

Some old adaptation features that we had (and no longer need) have remained behind in us and our fellow creatures.

(Now if it wasn't for that Gathering (er, shopping) causing so many problems, such as Credit Card bills -- it might not be such a bad thing. <g>

http://www.originsoflife.org/vestigialtraits.phpIsn't it, though? I really enjoyed turning the possibilities over and over in my mind. It was one of those questing "what if this connects to this" kind of ADHD grooves for me. I found it particularly interesting since I know my own ancestry so well (it was a big thing in my family) and have looked into the types of tribal peoples that make up the majority of my gene pool. Not all tribes are hunter-gatherers...but the ones I have roots in sure were. And then when you consider the history indicating that so many of the hunter-gatherer tribes did not have a chance to evolve because they were systematically eliminated for being "savages" (but hey, those women look kind of sexy so let's keep them....and breed with them)...or think about how certain detractors like to trot out the idea that there is so little incidence of ADHD in Japan because the culture there values and demands obedience in children, so of course ADHD is caused by lack of strict discipline (never mind that Japan has been a farming type society for several thousand years, plenty of time for those pesky hunter types to be bred out). I had a good time suspending my cultural concepts and imagining others. Just lots of stuff, it was very cool. But I had really only considered the hunter side of the coin while I was mentally wandering around this theory.

And now you come in here and present a theory about vestigial traits for the other side of the coin! I can see it....when your culture is based on moving from hunting ground to hunting ground, so that the hunters could do what they did for the tribe, as a gatherer, you would have to gather as much as you could in as short a time as possible. Keep going out again and again to find more sources, hoard as much as you possibly could, because there was always the possibility that hunting would be poor and what was gathered would have to sustain the tribe. Not to mention that what had been gathered would be utilized while on the move, so that the move would not be slowed down in order to allow for hunting. So yea, that might easily translate into compulsive shopping: grab all you can, keep going back to find more, store as much as you possibly can.</g> I liked looking at the link too. Makes sense, vestigial traits and vestigial behaviors.

<g>Too cool Q! Now my kind of mind has something else to turn over and over for a while :). I am really glad you posted this. Thanks!


</g>

re: 22 (disbelief of certain illnesses by the public)

We can't all be neuroscientists. :eek: OMG really? Its interesting how many like to think that they are though. And they have all kinds of fascinating "proof" sometimes :rolleyes:.


Haven't you noticed that the "non believers" are often uneducated folks -=or=- pompous folks who pretend to know everything?I sure did. I usually just just write off the uneducated, you cannot make somebody learn and ignorance is bliss, all that good stuff. The ones you get my goat are the pompous ones who pretend to know it all and to have all the answers. I just mentioned a type like this in my last reply, I should have just combined my replies. :D The only good thing about a pompous know-it-all is that its so much fun to laugh at them while you count up all the holes in their logic after they finally shut up and go away.

They cannot tolerate ambiguity, and must have Yes or No answers. :) Not only that, you must agree with them too! No room for differing opinions around these people.

The most BRILLIANT scientists and doctors and professors that I have ever met and studied under, have NO problem with saying: "you know what? we [the science community] don't know [yet?]". Maybe because they admit they are HUMAN and not trying to come off as something greater and better? :rolleyes:

You're on a roll today! :D

crazy~feet said, in part:

The only good thing about a pompous know-it-all is that its so much fun to laugh at them while you count up all the holes in their logic after they finally shut up and go away.

Now and then I use the magic words to get rid of them:

"How interesting! where did you read that?" [Or a similar question asking for sources or supplementary materials or experimental data]

On the telephone, you can derail these long blow-it-all pronouncements by asking them to mail you more information, because you don't have time to hear it all now.

Then, when it's time to get the wood stove started you're all ready. Plus the very slim possibility that they actually do have a point.

Many years ago I knew a blowhard who was remarkable for finding out what people were experts in, and then attempting to prove to them that he knew as much or more about their topic than they did themselves. Portuguese? He would teach you how to cook fish. Electrical engineer? He would tell you about all the wiring he had done, including details of which if he had really done it that way, would have killed him. He was a source of endless fun. I never did find out why he had such a peculiar hobby.

Many years ago I knew a blowhard who was remarkable for finding out what people were experts in, and then attempting to prove to them that he knew as much or more about their topic than they did themselves. Portuguese? He would teach you how to cook fish. Electrical engineer? He would tell you about all the wiring he had done, including details of which if he had really done it that way, would have killed him. He was a source of endless fun. I never did find out why he had such a peculiar hobby.So far I like the way you roll, Hollyduck :D I would have loved this guy! You have good options for dealing with other pompous windbags, so tell me: How do you deal with the ones you see on the internet?

I have some ideas about what makes this type tick.


Maybe they need admiration so much that they are willing to obtain false admiration.

Maybe they have some kind of mentality that is able to override the message "Warning! Warning! You are making an asshat of yourself!"

If its a man, maybe he has that type of issue that needs to be overcompensated for ;) and he cannot afford a new sportscar.

Maybe the desire to look intelligent is much easier to respond to than the desire to actually learn anything.

Maybe they have some kind of twisted personality disorder and if they can actually get somebody to believe their rubbish, they like the feeling of being a powerful "puppet master" by controlling someone foolish enough to go along with them.

I probably have more but those are what popped right out this time. :D

crazy~feet: You have good options for dealing with other pompous windbags, so tell me: How do you deal with the ones you see on the internet?

Life is too short to deal with all of them. Also, most people who are wrong will fight tooth and nail to avoid being corrected, so why try?

Then there are trolls. Their goal is to get other people upset, by making statements which are guaranteed to provoke lots of response. They are best dealt with by starvation. If what they have said requires correction, it should be kept to a brief dispassionate link to an article the deals correctly with the topic.

The internet is the natural dwelling place of blowhards and instant experts, where they swarm like mosquitoes. I swear, sometimes...well, I just swear.

But the good news is that the internet is helping immunize the world population against instant experts (and con artists, of course) wherever they appear, giving people a place to see them everyday in their hundreds of varieties and learn to recognize them at a glance. No ordinary life span pre-Internet could have possibly given people so many opportunities to recognize these public nuisances in so many forms. I look forward with hope to a day when con artists find it nearly impossible to con anybody. I know this is a fantasy,but I treasure it anyway.

Ducky

:) Excellent replies. You'll do well here.

is
n't :-)
a fantasy

I'm on Internet forums (fora)
for a specific metabolic disorder in dogs,
for electronic equipment which has just been produced
{{{for ADD}}}
for electronic equipment which is no longer produced
for exercise
for electronic equipment that is yet to be produced

... my point - I guess - is that once one opens up one's frame of reference - immediately thereafter (then)
- getting to grips with the ADD which accompanies
(information overload - that is)
that information is (then)
becomes (then)
is then managed with extreme relative (to the nonADD state) ease.

Hey!
and welcome to the forum -
you'll find a buncha' people here who think real fast -
I sense that the c~f welcome points towards your
being

~up to speed~

as it were -
three contexts (at least) for 'speed' :-) - intended ...
... ...

:-)

... relating to an end to all of the silliness -
it's comin'

it really is ...

I seem to spend much of my time (these days)
in a paralysis - wondering what (little)* will be left
after the silliness passes**.

*really so

**more a question - of what is important?
-given-
that money and 'stuff' {does not, is not} to a buncha' regular virtual entities.

-*-

In all seriousness - that reality is an illusion - changes one's perception rather radically - with proviso - that illusion is meant not in some kinda' hallucinogenic trippy kinda' way - simply that 'hard reality' is not so hard - and that this realization softens to irrelevance many of the drives which keep us strivin' to 'achieve' in nonADD world.

As far as I can see - all that's worth achieving is some kinda' realization which goes deeper than just empty words - that we're all the same.
Not hippy rhetoric - more a behaviour altering makeover in which the consequences of one's actions to others are considered - lest we rip their hearts out through ill-consideration.

ADDers ~know~ that the knee bone is connected to the leg bone.

Which is useful if we're the ankle bone - slamshattering our own knees; heck! why not both of them - after all!
it's a dog eat dog world out there, isn't it ? (so) (not).

On the telephone, you can derail these long blow-it-all pronouncements by asking them to mail you more information ...


if someone tries to sell you a phone - 'sell them a phone'.

if someone tries to sell you a mortgage - 'sell them a mortgage'.

(statements - reflecting the need to give them a taste of their own medicine).

... if someone tries to make you do something bad - make them feel bad.

random example.

'buy a mortgage from me' -
"Why?"
'excellent rates apply'
"Recent news stories suggest that people like yourself are encouraging people to get deeper into debt - and that suicides are on the increase due to lives being repossessed by companies such as the one which you work for - do you feel any sense of remorse for the many people who're dying to keep you in comfort"
'but that isn't anything to do with me'
"It's everything to do with you - please give me your number and name - and I'll get some of the relatives of the dead who you've killed - to phone you up - and to educate you on the nature of your chosen occupation"




Yeah! sure - it's unfair
- but the knee bone's connected to the leg bone's connected to the ankle bone - and the vestigial bones need to be excised - regardless of whether a period of painful chiropractic realignment will be necessary in order to produce a more structurally sound skeleton.

I seem to spend much of my time (these days)
... wondering what ... will be left
after the silliness passes
More silliness?

Seriously, when the silliness passes or at least is dramatically reduced, what's left is of permanent value.

To my mind it's kind of like panning for gold. The "gold" doesn't have to be Platonic dialogues or Taj Mahals, can just as easily be a brilliant yellow poplar leaf or dinner with an old friend.

Once the silliness is no longer a distraction, you find that there was more gold than you previously expected. Under a thin layer of gravel it is all gold.

And if that isn't good enough, a lot of the silliness reveals itself to be gold once your vision clears.


Ducky
~dons her saffron robe and begin spinning the prayer wheel, which bears a striking resemblance to a miniature carousel, complete with little horses, tigers and ducks ~

vestigial

... evolution doesn't take anything away - is an active process.
I strongly suspect that morality is being made mandatory in our next instantiation -
after thousands of years of stunning example of how pathetically poor we have been at being 'good'.

Man pops out of beast - and has a mind to behave like beast.
So the mind thinks a little - gets a doctorate in philosophy -
and then resolves to behave a little less like beast.
Just that - that wasn't enough -
and so in its place we're given this huge great device that's strapped inside of our heads -
when it goes off we're made to feel -
anxiety
depression

*real* bad

sounds dumb doesn't it - till

Ahhh!

co-morbids

or rather
'why do ADDers suffer from paralysis in a world of torment**?'

not rocket science nor quantum physics

3 guesses -
the first
- I'm guessin' you get it in one.

not rocket science nor quantum physics
though expertise in brain surgery* might
help.

* - particularly whole organ transplants

** - contextual disorders are real