Individualized Doctoral Plan: Back to the "U" Daze

I took a year off from my Ph.D. studies for a number of different reasons: Continental Congress 2009, helping the Rasta Jew become a better high school student, and angst about the direction of my research. The last was probably the most significant reason that the original plan to take a semester off stretched into a full year. But that year is over now, and after dealing with some typical UNM bureaucratic idiocy, I'm back at the "U". (Why, oh why when there is nothing offered in the college for doc students during the summer, do they count summers as regular semester, thus essentially fining a person the cost of applying to the program again for taking a fall-spring 2 semester combination surrounded by two summers? I think they nickel and dime students in order to afford the exorbitant athletic budgets--but that's a different blog).



So here I am back, and that angst that kept me from registering last spring--along with the worst winter weather in a generation for the East Mountains--means that I am rethinking my research direction. Which is interesting and a little nerve racking, but I understand that it is not uncommon. The particulars are unique to each student, though, as are mine.



My background is heavily in the sciences. Prior to going into teaching science for a host of life-course and personal reasons, all my university work--undergrad and grad--had been in the sciences--biology, geology, although a minor in Anthropology and my interest in history allowed me to take a teaching certification in social studies as well. (Science and math certified teachers almost never get to teach anything else, because of the dearth of science teachers, and that was true of me, but I have the endorsement).



That heavy science background made it natural for me to consider a dissertation project weighted toward a scientific study when I decided to pursue a Ph.D. after earning an MA in Special Education (emphasis in Gifted/Twice-Exceptional--that is, Gifted with another qualifying diagnosis). So I planned to get a dual Ph.D. in Special Education and Psychology--spanning not only two departments, but two colleges. My research was to be on the differences in brain development among typically developing children, intellectually gifted children, and intellectually gifted children with Autism Spectrum Disorders. I began charging into it. I enjoyed courses in Neurobiology, Neuroanatomy and physiology, research seminars. I enjoyed courses in children's psychopathology, intelligence testing, and still more research seminars in psychology. But I did not enjoy the deadly serious politics of the Psychology Department at UNM. Whereas the Special Education Department is particular open to students developing an Individualized Doctoral Plan (IDP) for studies, the Psychology Department is not. And although the Office of Graduate Studies advisor was enthusiastic about such a "edge of the envelope" venture, the Psychology Department was not. So among other things I was doing during the 2009 - 10 school year, I was floundering, and wondering if I really wanted to do this Ph.D. at all.

As the summer 2010 days wound down towards August, when registration is required, I ran into one of my professors, who also happens to be my advisor's husband, playing guitar at ABQ Uptown. We had a nice conversation during which I allowed that I might return to the program. The next day I got an e-mail from my advisor about a special course, a Dissertation Seminar, that she recommended I take. That was the encouragement I was looking for, and I am now re-admitted, taking six hours, and thinking about my research.

I have decided a few things. First, now that I know the psychology dual degree will not work--I could go on beating my head against that wall, but it is likely to give me a headache and make me tired--I want to change my focus in the research. The point of the dissertation research, my advisor keeps saying, is that it be something doable so that I will get it done. "It is not your life's work," another member of my committee advises. "It is the ticket to the next phase of work." I have been down this path before--a gargantuan project that took so long that I hated it, and the field, before it was all over. I tend to dream up these huge, complex projects that are doable--if I want to delay graduation until I am 75.

So--the focus. I want it to be related to the minor hours I have been accumulated over the three years I was taking significant coursework. Obviously, it also has to be related to special education. Since I have had experience as a homeschooling mom, and I have contacts in that community, my advisor suggested that I think about looking at some aspect of homeschooling for Gifted/Twice-exceptional children. I thought about that, and I think it is good. Nothing much has been looked at in this area--in fact, educators in general tend to ignore homeschooling as a significant educational alternative, even though more than one million American children are now homeschooled. It's not the mainstream, but it's certainly not the province of a few religious fanatics (as the MSM would like you to believe) either.

One caveat my advisor and I decided upon is that I need to narrow the field for the Twice-exceptional qualification. Twice-exceptional (2X or 2e) means children who are intellectually gifted (IQ usually 125 - 130 and above) and who have some other IDEA qualifying exceptionality. In kids who are a priori gifted, these exceptionalities do not include Mental Retardation and generally not Traumatic Brain Injury, but they can include severe physical disablities ( like Cerebral Palsy), Emotional-Behavior Disorders (which encompasses mood disorders, anxiety disorders and conduct disorders), Specific Learning Disabilities, Other Health Impaired (this is usually ADHD, but also encompasses severe and life-threatening diseases, such as cancer or Type I Diabetes) and Autism. With respect to Autism--which has been my interest--intellectually gifted kids aren't generally found among the severely autistic, whose intelligence is hard to assess. 2x students with ASD usually have Asperger Syndrome, High Functioning Autism, or Non-Verbal Learning Disorder.

So today, as I write this, I have the beginning of an idea, but not really the idea itself. I know that I want to tap into the relatively unexplored field of homeschooling. I know that I want to focus on some aspect of Gifted/2X. It is thought that the number of gifted students among the homeschooled population is high, though I have not seen any numbers. For the 2X component, I want to focus on those gifted kids with what Temple Grandin calls "different minds." These are the gifted kids who, although they have enormous potential, learn so differently that they are far less likely to be successful in the school environment. So I am thinking of those with Autism, severe ADD (without the behavioral component) and related syndromes.

I see the broad outlines now, but I do not really have fleshed out questions or ideas. Yet. Those will come. I think they will come from thinking and writing, along with a good dose of preliminary research. And of course, I welcome reader's thoughts--especially if you are or have been homeschooling a very smart and very different child. Or if you are intellectually gifted, no matter what your age or background.

The Merely Difficult

"The merely difficult we do at once,
the impossible takes a little longer,
miracles by appointment only!"
--unofficial Seabees Motto

Today marks the end of the first week of the fall semester at UNM.
Getting into a routine this week has been remarkably hard because each evening of the week we have had some reason to go to a meeting. Monday was Scouts--which was expected. Tuesday was the Scout troop council, which was not. I work late on Wednesday, and last night was East Mountain High School's Open House. The good thing is that the Boychick was a good sport through all of this and did his homework--including math--with no complaint. The strain on all of our routines has been exacerbated by the chaos in the hallway and the fact that the Boychick is currently sleeping on a mattress on the floor of the Chem Geek Princess's room.

But we are managing.
Even though all of us--proud carriers of the Broader Autistic Phenotype--get mighty cranky when our routines get disrupted. When there is no routine we snarl a lot.

Dealing with UNM Bureaucracy makes me positively grumpy.
On Monday, as I was leaving the COE Graduate Writing Center for lunch, my supervisor stopped me at the door to Tireman Library. "You've got to go to OGS (Office of Graduate Studies) right away!" she informed me. "'The Platform' is saying that you are not eligible to place for your GA."

In any normal place, one might figure that it was a small snafu, but here at New Mexico's Flagship University--the same University that ceded territory temporarily to Mexico last September--students and faculty automatically assume the worst.

When I got to OGS--still unlunched--the work-study could not find me in the computer.
"You'll have to wait for Edwina to return from lunch," she said, snapping her bright blue bubble gum. "Please have a seat right over there."

Oh, no! Not Edwina. When you have to see Edwina it's really bad. I remember that much from my TA and RA days in the biology department. Edwina is the administrative assistant of last resort.
Being a Nervous Nelly, I was certain that I was headed for a disaster of biblical proportions. Or worse. I mean, it's bad enough if G-d forgets your name, but when the UNM computer doesn't know who you are do you even exist? Now there was an existential question for me to ponder as I waited for Edwina for return from lunch.

Fortunately, before Edwina returned from fortifying herself for an afternoon of unsnarling gnarly bureaucratic messes, another COE Graduate Writing Studio GA came in with her passport. While putting the GA's info into the computer, the work-study looked at me and said, " I found you!" And she was able to tell me that I had not submitted my demographic data form. (That's the really important form that lets UNM reassure itself that I am " female" and "other" and that UNM is therefore "inclusive"). For this reason, they had discarded --shredded, I fervently hope!--all my other hiring paper work. Could I please submit it again? Post-haste? Of course I could. But not being in the habit of carrying around my passport (needed for the I-9), I took custody of a bunch of forms to "bring back tomorrow."

Which is why I was at UNM on Tuesday normally a day I am scheduled to study at home.
Since I had driven to campus suffering from sinus pressure due to the drop in altitude anyway, I decided to find out how to do a dual-disciplinary Ph.D. I had sent an inquiry to OGS last week, and received a response on Monday. Bill at OGS wrote that I needed to talk to the Psychology department head and their Grad adviser about requirements.

That was easy.
The department head e-mailed separately to tell me that she was very interested in my work and that I should talk to the adviser so that I could get started. The adviser started by telling me that I am crazy. We laughed. Everyone on campus is certifiable, after all, and here we were sitting in the Psychology building. Oh, she continued, and had I taken the GRE in the past five years? Since it was longer ago than that, I'd have to take it again. It's not the the Psychology Department wouldn't accept old scores--they tend to be remarkably stable for people my age--it's that ETS would not release them. A money-making ploy, no doubt. Sigh.

Then it was back to OGS to see how to inform the university of dual status.
I waited to see Doug. When I sat down in front of his desk, I briefly told him what I wanted to do.
He said, "You can't do that. There's a policy in place because at the Ph.D. level we don't want students to become scattered."

Or think outside the box.
Innovation, thy name is not the Ivory Tower.

I smiled, and leaned forward. I said, "So you're telling me this may be more than 'merely difficult?'"
He got the reference. He asked for my ID number.
I couldn't see what came up on the computer--it had one of those privacy screens--but I was fairly confident of what it would show.
He asked me to describe to him how my research would require the bringing together of two disciplines. I began talking and waving my hands. (I can't help it, it's genetic).
I told him about my background in the biological sciences.
I told him about the brain research that I want to do.
I told him about the gap between what we know about genetics, epigenetics, development and interventions for very high functioning kids with ASD.
I asked for a pen. He handed me a blank piece of paper as well.
I drew a diagram showing how the two disciplines come together.
Finally, he handed me a form for petitioning the Dean of Graduate Studies for a variance from policy.
He said: "You have my interest. Anyone can petition the Dean. If you succeed, you will be breaking new ground. Things change slowly in universities. But they can change."
And he told me what I'd need to do in order for the Dean to take my petition seriously.

I am going to have to rethink some of my other commitments.
I have scheduled the GRE.
I have a 0.5 FTE GA.
I have 3 research hours.
I have 3 seminar hours.
I am a mom.

Everything else will have to wait.

This is going to take a little longer.

Smoothing the Stones: Wrestling with the History of Education

First, a favorite quote:

"An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher. The society that scorns excellence in plumbing just because plumbing is a humble activity, and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its philosophy will hold water."- John William Gardner



This semester, I have been thinking about the ideology of inclusion in special education in the public schools. And in my thinking and reading about the issue, I had come to the conclusion that the mindset of the inclusion ideologues--those who would have us essentially deconstruct special education in favor of full inclusion in the face of contradictory evidence about what kind of instruction works for many students with disabilities--is the consequence of a shoddy philosophical foundation for American education. Essentially, the epistemology (theory of knowledge) embraced by modern American education has been positivism--which has its philosophical origins in Pragmatism. But Positivism is an incomplete philosophy that has neither metaphysics (a theory of reality) nor ethics that are grounded in the foundational axioms of the philosophy. And worse, Positivism does not simply neglect metaphysics, but actively rejects them. An incomplete philosophical basis makes the philosophy unable to "hold water" as John Gardner says in the quote above, or more to the point, it cannot hold its own against the incursions of post-modernist (deconstructivist) thought.



As my thinking on this issue has evolved to this point, I realized that for my Trends and Issues in Special Education class it might be useful to look into the foundational ideas of modern American education, a review of the history of the field, so to speak, in order to understand how we got to this point where advocates for children with disabilities could, with the fervor of the true believer, want to tear down the field entirely, and reconstruct it as a kind of place in which every child will be treated the same regardless of their differences.



And so I have been reading. I started out with secondary sources, such as Diane Ravitch's Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms, and then went to primary sources such as John Dewey's Democracy in Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education.And as an antidote to the "schooling" mentality, I also pulled out John Taylor Gatto's An Underground History of American Education. I had ordered this book last year, along with A Different Kind of Teacher, and I read part of it, but got busy with other things and did not finish it then. Although it is not a scholarly book in the traditional sense, Gatto does cite his sources in the text, and presents a compelling view of the aims of modern American education from his experience, as well as from some of the same sources that I am reading.

And this is where it all gets so very interesting, because in the past few weeks I have also

read the columnist Jonah Goldberg's new book, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. (I just realized that I was reading an "underground" history and a "secret" history at the same time. I am hearing the Twilight Zone theme in my head). This book is about the American progressive movement's foundations in, and admiration of European fascism, the history and consequences of progressive politics in the US, and the consequences of a marriage of progressive policy and the American character. Although I am not going to review the book here, I will say it is a fascinating read and that I learned a lot about the history of the early 20th Century in the United States that I did not know previously.

Reading both of these books at the same time produced one of those moments of serendipity that seem almost prophetic. I began to notice that I was reading about the same people and the same big ideas. John Dewey. William James. Jane Addams. Woodrow Wilson.
Of course it was not a complete confluence of thinking--Gatto also discussed the founders of American education as we have it today, and Goldberg was outlining the progressives of the same time period. But the interesting thing to me was that many of these people were the same. Or they knew each other. And they had the same pragmatic, statist world view. Essentially, the goal was to overthrow the "cult" of individualism, and create humanity anew, as cogs in the wheel of the state. If you had to read Bellamy's Looking Backward in high school (a very boring dystopia meant to be a utopia--I admit I read the first 50 pages and then used "skippibus" to pass the test), use that to get a picture of what these people envisioned.If you have not read it, think of the dull, gray monotony of the Soviet Union in its waning years, but without the KGB and the Gulag. Or think of the movie GATTACA.

Of course Education (with a capital "E") was to be the principal way this would be accomplished. In the system envisioned by these reformers, schools would be used to separate the children from their families, their particular cultures and belief systems, and made into useful slaves of the state. Woodrow Wilson said: "The chief job of the educator is to make your children as little like you as possible." In other words, the point of schools at least from the point of view of the educational establishment at Columbia Teacher's College, Stanford, and the University of Chicago, was to destroy the sovereignty of the family, and train (I will not use the word educate) students to think of the state as their true home. Only a few, elite people would be educated in the true sense of the word, those who would have the wisdom to order life for everyone else.

These are scary ideas. And they can be found in the primary sources that I have mentioned. This is not some wild conspiracy theory made up by Gatto, Goldberg or others on the right. Gatto presents a much darker view of the envisioned "nanny state" education, the pernicious violence of empty minds, and the dull unreality of Disneyland. Goldberg believes that an American fascism would be 'totalitarian-lite': Less of the jack-booted brownshirts, and more of the social worker mentality. Less of "Sieg Heil!" and more "I'm from the government and I'm here to help."

One ray of light in all of this, is that the teachers and school administrators do not necessarily share these ideas nor do they agree with the incomplete philosophies upon which they are founded. In fact, most schools of education do not teach this history of education in the United States. In my own experience in graduate education (although I cannot speak for the undergraduate level having come by my teaching license in an alternative way) at the master's level, the focus was on methodologies and curriculum, and the history of educational thought was not considered. And although some of the ideas could be gleaned from these very methodologies, I suspect the average teacher working on a project for a class after a full day's work, was not likely to even begin to think about the big ideas at all. Since I was in Gifted Education, we did consider some larger ideas about teaching, and we did discuss the hostility inherent in American education toward the gifted. It was clear to me that American educational philosophy was anti-intellectual, but we did not explore the roots of this, leaving the student to think that it was engendered in the ordinary citizen. We were not let in on the "secret" "underground" history that would make it plain that the anti-intellectual bent of American schools comes from the social engineers of the Progressive movement, not from the farmers and factory workers who wanted their kids to be educated for a better life in the singular, individual sense.

Do you dectect some frustration on my part? You are correct. It is part and parcel of the rearrangement of my internal "maps" of the world. It is the sense of betrayal that Adam and Chava must have felt when they partook of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and discovered another layer of reality.

Ah, well, this is an education in the true sense. It is the need to grapple with the big ideas of a field, and consider how those ideas shaped the reality we call school and schooling. Certainly, with respect to the current trends and issues in special education, the problem is an incomplete philosophy. But there is an even larger problem to consider. The argument on this larger level is about the purpose of public education in the United States. Is it about preparing our children for the future, teaching them to read and write, to think and to take their place as free citizens of the Republic? Or is it about re-making humanity, and creating a utopia controlled by those who know best what's good for us? The first idea is what the general public thinks about education, and the second resides on the level of progressive social planning. And that leads to another question: Which one of these goals does school, as we currently know it, best fulfill?

And that brings me in a round about way to a personal insight about my choices with regard to my career as a teacher and my choices about the education of my own son. In my years as a teacher, my job choices were toward smaller classrooms where I could teach kids using methodologies that were different than those commonly in use in this day of educating to least common denominator. By teaching special education for children with learning difficulties, behavioral difficulties, and then, the gifted kids, I placed myself outside the mainstream. The first such class I taught were the throw-away kids, the ones that no one cared how I taught them. And the gifted kids were those that the system did not worry about--they'd already met the minimum standards. In this way, I was perhaps, a guerrilla teacher, although certainly I did not think of myself as engaging in subversive activities. My purpose was simply to get through each day with these kids without boring either myself or the students to death. That required the use of 'stealth' methodology. "When an administrator comes in," I'd tell the kids, "look serious. When we close the door, though, we can have fun and get something real accomplished."

And I still had to leave the classroom. Not because I was a bad teacher, nor because I disliked teaching. I was a pretty good teacher, I think, and I enjoyed the teaching. But dealing with the educational establishment became more and more joyless and wearing, though I did not understand why. And there was my son to think about. He was not making it in the classroom. This was partly because he had disabilities that the school had difficulty dealing with, but it was mostly because they could not capitalize on his unique strengths.

But when I took N. out of school, I did not fully realize the implications of our choices. As we evolved toward unschooling, I still did not recognize the revolutionary nature of what homeschooling means. Only now, as I reflect on how it has impacted the growth of my son, who has become a confident, self-reliant, adventurous learner; and the impact on our family, for we have become people who like each other and want to be together--only now do I have an inkling of how revolutionary homeschooling is. It appears to be a political act done for deeply personal reasons. It is a repudiation of the fascist notion that people are interchangable parts, who exist for the purpose of some greater "utopia" governed by those who always know what's best for everyone. And it is a very personal journey from the narrow places where my son's future could be predicted by IQ scores and standardized tests, to a vision of the high places of individuality and choice.

And is there hope in this field? How will I continue in it, knowing that everything I believe stands in opposition to the philosophy and to the commonly held beliefs about the field I have chosen? And yet, within me there is a sense that this is an important pursuit. And I take hope from the very sources that have made me wrestle with my internal maps.

"A relative handful of people could change the course of schooling significantly by resisting the suffocating advance of centralization and standardization of children, by being imaginative and determined in their resistance, by exploiting manifold weaknesses in the institution's internal coherence: the disloyalty its own employees feel toward it. It took 150 years to build this apparatus; it won't quit breathing overnight. The formula is to take a deep breath, then select five smooth stones and let fly. The homeschoolers have already begun."
--John Taylor Gatto, "I Quit, I Think" from The Underground History of American Education.

This wrestling with a philosophy that does not hold water may have its uses. After all, it is water that smooths the stones.

Just Thinking about Inclusion and Ideology

"I've been thinking," I said, as we settled into our steamy-hot, pre-Shabbat bath yesterday afternoon.

Generally, my husband Bruce gets a worried look on his face when I say this, fearing that my "thinking" is going to lead to some new and money-intensive rennovation for the house.
But this time, my thinking has to do with the focus or theme of this new semester in my doctoral program. Each semester seems to provoke a particular line of thinking in my mind, and seems to develop its own theme, as I place what I am learning into perspective with what I already know.

For my Trends and Issues in Special Education, I had just read an article by Kauffman that dealt with the inclusion movement and the (pick one) demise, repair, conversion, or reincarnation of the field of special education. And it got me thinking.

And, as I consider what kind of perspective I will bring as a graduate student in my Child Psychopathology class, I started thinking about the individuality, identity and gifts of neurodiverse people that we usually define by pathology such as those with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), Bipolar Disorder, Attention Disorders and others like this, that are essentially defined by differences in the structure and function of the brain. Thinking is added onto thinking!

The confluence of these two streams of thought seems to be coming down to some ideas I have about how in our thinking about education, we are narrowing what we consider to be normal and justifying that by wrapping ourselves in the mantle of "diversity." I was struck by the thought that what is happening in the field of Special Education with regard to inclusion seems to be particularly illustrative of what is happening in our society at large when it comes to dealing with differences. I am certainly not done with thinking about this, but I do have some ideas about what I think is happening. And I think that the concept of inclusion has moved from being one aspect of the continuum of services for special education to being an ideology of almost religious proportions in the minds of its most extreme advocates.

As originally outlined, inclusion meant that along the continuum of special education services, it was sensible to place the student with disabilities in the general education environment as much as possible. This meant that, for example, a student with severe and multiple disabilities, who might need full-day placement in a small classroom with a specialty teacher, should also have recess and lunch within the larger population of the school. But as the idea has evolved, inclusion has for some become about dismantling the continuum of services entirely, and advocating the full-time placement of all special education students in the general education classroom. To the inclusion ideologue, to provide any services in a separate setting is defined as segregation, and the argument is that separate is always inherently unequal. If those words--separate is unequal--sound familiar, they come for the landmark United States Supreme Court Case, Brown v. the Board of Education, which was the school desegregation decision.

It sounds very egalitarian. All children should, they say, have the same educational experience, in the general education classroom, and all necessary services to children with disabilities should be delivered in the general education classroom. This idea is justified by the argument that disabilities aren't really disabilities, and that all of us are fundamentally the same, really, and have the same needs. But when this concept of inclusion is married with the standards movement, which insists that every child should be making exactly the same achievements at the same age, we come to the absurd conclusion that we can mandate equal educational outcomes for all. This is clearly different from the notion that Brown v. Board was intended to ensure equal educational opportunity for all. (This last has problems of its own, and you can read a perspective of what they are here).

And what is really quite interesting--at least to me--is that all of this insisting that everyone is the same is being done in the name of diversity. It makes me wonder if the people who wrap themselves most tightly in the mantle of the diversity movement are the same people who are most afraid of acknowledging that there are real differences among human beings. (For more of my thoughts about this, you can go here).

And so, I am thinking.

I am thinking that it is very interesting that those who cry out the loudest about their respect for diversity, actually want to treat every person as if he or she is exactly the same as every other person. As Thomas Jefferson said, " Remember, first that the greatest inequality is to treat unequal things equally..." (Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, December 20, 1787).

I am thinking that it is very interesting that the ideology of "no difference" in education arises just as the sciences of neurobiology and genetics are demonstrating the fundamental physical nature of differences among human beings in the brain as well as the body.

I am thinking that a denial of differences among people is a denial of individuality, which is defined by differences. And that if there is no individuality, then it could be argued that there is no need for individual rights. This kind of thinking could lead to a conception of group rights, a kind of fascism or collectivism that strikes at the very heart of the American ideal of individual rights inherent to each person.

I am thinking that it is also very interesting that this denial of individual differences comes at the same time that "Aspies" and other neurodiverse people are finding their own voices. They are declaring that they have their own cultures and their own appreciation of who they are--that their neuro-atypicality is part of their identity; that they don't want to be cured of it, that they like their differences. (See, for example, Daniel Tammet's book, Born on a Blue Day, or Susanne Antonetta's book, A Mind Apart: Travels in a Neurodiverse World. Or go to Aspies for Freedom, a website devoted to these ideas).

Somehow, all of this thinking is going to come together and gel with another train of thought, about what I call the narrowing of normal--which I have yet to write about--and I don't know yet what kinds of conclusions I am going to reach, and how they will affect my direction in my doctoral program.

Right now I am...just thinking.

It's Not Another Shot in the Ritalin Wars

A few weeks ago a neuroimaging study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Normally, many such studies are published in various journals in science and medicine without a whole lot of fanfare. But this one had a magic phrase in the title. The phrase was one that gets ideologues everywhere very excited. The title of the study is:

Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder is characterized by a delay in cortical maturation

The magic phrase? Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.
In the weeks since the study was published, the press and blog worlds have been having a great deal of fun making the conclusions into another shot in the ideological "Ritalin Wars."
Some writers have claimed that AD/HD does not exist. Others have used it to claim that AD/HD is an artifact of poor diet, bad parenting, and/or curriculum reform in the public schools. Some have actually come to the conclusion that the title might suggest, that AD/HD is definitively a form of developmental delay. As we shall see, though, despite the way you might read the title, that is not the conclusion of the study.

Being a scientist myself, I decided that I would not weigh in on the conclusions until I had the chance to actually read the study. Today, as I procrastinate on a research paper I am writing, seemed like the ideal time to do so. So I went to the NY Times article from a few weeks ago and got the journal title for the article, as well as the name of the first author. Then I connected to my university library system -the joys of technology are without number!--and in five minutes I had used the e-journal finder to navigate to Highwire Press and download a pdf file copy of the study.

You can try this at home, but you may have to pay a fee to download the study. Most journals are made available to students and researchers via institutional subscriptions to publishers and databases. The article was published earlier this month in the PNAS. It is in the current issue.
The citation is:
Shaw, P. et. al. (2007). Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder is characterized by a delay in cortical maturation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104 (49) 19649 - 19654.

It is a very good study. The methodology was good, the number of subjects was impressive--446 human subjects--and the conclusions made matched the data that was published. This study overall is an excellent advance in tracking brain anatomy differences between subjects that carry the diagnosis of AD/HD and those that do not.

In the abstract the researchers say:
There is controversy over the nature of the disturbance in brain development that underpins attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In particular, it is unclear whether the disorder results from a delay in brain maturation or whether it represents a complete deviation from the template of typical development.
They are telling us the purpose of the study: to get evidence that might solve the controversy in the field. But pay attention to the wording. The controversy is not whether or not the disorder results from a delay in brain maturation, but whether or not it "represents a complete deviation from the template of typical development." The question they is whether or not AD/HD can result partly from a delay in brain maturation.

The authors repeat this in different words in the introductory paragraph:
Since its earliest descriptions, there has been debate as to whether the disorder is a consequence partly of delay in brain maturation or as a complete deviation from the template of typical development.

As I have said above, the data from their work does support their hypothesis that AD/HD is "a consequence partly of delay in brain maturation." That means they have done a good study. But one study does not an etiology make. It is important for the non-scientist to get it that one does not prove or disprove a hypothesis from one study, even one so well constructed as this one. Good scientists know this, and in the discussion section of any well-written scientific report, they will report caveats and weaknesses and any possible confounding variables. This is so that, when future studies are done, they (or others) can try to fill in the gaps for the study. That's usually done by fiddling with the methodology.

This study was a well-written study by good scientists and they do point out weaknesses that might be fixed in future work. In the very beginning they point out that many studies using physiological data (this study uses anatomical data)--that is how the brain is actually working--support their hypothesis, but there are also many other studies that find "a quantitatively distinct neurophysiology, with unique architecture of the (EEG) and some highly anomylous findings in functional imaging studies, more in keeping with ADHD as a deviation from typical development." This is interesting. When I first heard of the study and heard that it was done using anatomical imaging, I wondered about what functional imaging would show. If I want, I can check it out.

Geek Alert! A question I now have is this: fMRI studies require the use of fluorescent dyes or other ways of getting the signal above ground. These are not usually done on children (for obvious reasons). So I wonder if these confounding studies are targeting an adult population with ADHD? If so, it could be that we are dealing with two very different populations. After all, adults with ADHD would be the children who did not grow out of it.

Another issue: The study was done using anatomical imaging and not functional imaging. The researchers used very good techniques to get at the maturational rate of various parts of the brain, but ultimately they were still measuing gray matter (neuron cell bodies) cortical thickness. Two questions: Are there differences between the two populations in the percentage of gray matter v. white matter (glia and myelenation)? And what about physiological differences? Do the brains work differently? I saw an fMRI study just this morning that showed differences in activation in the pre-frontal cortex (Brodman 9) for adults with ADHD (little to no activation) and typical adults.

In other words, anatomy is not the whole story here.
And to be fair, it was not the authors who claimed that it was.
That would be the press and pundits and ideologues. In other words, those who either did not bother to read the study carefully or those who have an axe to grind when it comes to issues about AD/HD.

So what did we find out from this study? We found out that part of the difference between kids with a diagnosis of ADHD and those without, is in the rate of brain maturation. Kids with AD/HD diagnoses (it was a mixed group of kids with primarily hyperactive, primarily inattentive and combined types) have brains in which the cortices mature more slowly, delayed by approximately 3 years, with a very significant p value. And we found out that in these kids, the brain development trajectory was the same for kids with and without ADHD.

But the researchers also analyzed the data for specific brain areas. And these tests showed that the trajectory of the brain development for all cortical areas was not identical. The kids with ADHD tended to have faster motor area maturation than those without. And they had slower executive function (frontal lobes!) maturation.
What does James Webb say of gifted kids? Farrari motor and dune buggy driver! It looks like the same developmental pattern is true for kids with ADHD.

This is very useful information. It is particularly useful for people who treat kids with ADHD as well as for people who teach them. It is very helpful in planning interventions to help these kids learn academically and function socially to know that their executive function maturity may be more than three years behind the average kid. As a teacher, as a researcher, and as a parent, I find this information to be extremely helpful and very interesting.

But it is not another shot in the Ritalin wars.

The authors did not say that ADHD does not exist. In fact, in their first paragraph, they define it as a neurological disorder. They describe the delayed maturation of the cortices of the brain as a "characterizing" ADHD. It is, then, a characteristic that could be used to differentiate people who have ADHD and people with other psychiatric diagnoses.

They did not say that children with ADHD should not be treated with stimulants like Ritalin. In fact, one possible confounding variable they mention is that 80% of the clinical population in the study (clinical = those with ADHD diagnoses) were being treated with stimulant medication. They do say that stimulant medication can be an effective short-acting treatment.

Finally, by calling the maturational delay a characteristic, the authors imply that there is another, more ultimate cause. They discuss this further in the last part of the discussion. The differences cannot be attibuted to intelligence or sociocultural factors because these were controlled in the design of the study. There is definite evidence that the differences are partly due to genetics because brain growth and development is controlled by molecules called neurotrophins and "polymorphisms within the brain-derived neurotrophic factor and
nerve growth-factor 3 genes have already been tentatively linked with ADHD."
A polymorphism is a difference in DNA base sequences from one individual to another.

A claim that genetics is involved in causing a neurological disorder does not mean that environment does not play a role. It is likely that something as complicated as differences in brain development is controlled by quite a few genes, that is, it is polygenic. It is also likely that some of those genes effect a number of different systems, that is, they are pleiotrophic. And of course, environment does affect gene expression--that is what proteins the genes make and when they are activated.

So that's it, folks. It is a very good study. It was done well, and as in most well-done scientific studies, it raises more questions for future work.

And the findings do not provide fuel for the ideologues among us.

It's That Time Again...

It's come down to the last two weeks of the semester for me and for MLC.

She had a paper due today and one due Wednesday.

I have a paper due on Thursday. It's the one about the neurogenic hypothesis for depression. It was interesting. It was exciting. Until about 1 PM today, when I realized that I still have about 5 pages to write and I am absolutely sick of the subject! I will be glad--glad!--when I hear that the hypothesis isn't so hot after all!

I have reached that point where I find myself dreaming about French Polynesia in the middle of a sentence about how SSRI's up regulate adult neurogenesis in the granular layer of the hippocampus. Soon I will be asking myself the existential questions:

Where do we come from?

What are we?

Where are we going?

And I know that I will truly have had enough when begin I answer them in neuroscientific jargon (with apologies to Paul Gauguin):

Where do we come from? Our memory for location appears to be formed in the posterior portions of the hippocampus.

What are we? Neurons that fire together wire together.

Where are we going? A genetic predisposition for depression can be triggered by environmental influences such as stress.

But my questions will continue with the one that plagues all graduate students as the final weeks of the semester loom large before them:

What was I thinking, anyway?

But no, I refuse to even try to answer that one!

French Polynesia is looking better and better. Sun. Sand. Palm trees...

...and no environmental stress.

I wonder if I have enough frequent flyer miles?

Hmmm. I'll check that out, as soon as I finish discussing the problems with the neurogenic hypothesis.

Among Scientists...

I have really enjoyed being among the neuroscience grad students and researchers for the past two semesters. This group has been through two tough courses together: Neurobiology--which was essentially the physics, chemistry and molecular biology of the brain--and Neuroanatomy and Neurophysiology--which is exactly what the name promises. We have spent every Thursday afternoon this fall in a poorly ventilated lab on the third floor of the Basic Medical Sciences Building. For the first 12 weeks, we dissected the human brain and learned to identify structures and their connections and what they do. The past 3 weeks have been spent on learning the mouse brain and doing histology thin-sections of it.

This picture is of Vint--the guy in the front, who is my lab partner and future neurologist, as well as Jenny and Steve, future neuroscientists.

Here, we are looking at a sagittal section of the mouse brain on Allen Neuroscience Brain Atlases. For our final lab practical, we are going to have to be able to line up coronal sections rostral (nose) to caudal (back of the mouse brain).

These courses have been hard for me, because being away from primary research in science for 10 years is like being away for a lifetime. So much is being learned every day--and the revolution in science caused by genomics and proteonomics (genomes and how they work) has changed everything! It was just starting when I left the laboratory for the classroom.

But even though the coursework has required a lot of catching up on my part, it has been wonderful to be among scientists again.
The most important aspect of the undergraduate education of a scientist is to teach her how to think in very specific ways. The specific background of the field is also important, but is secondary to thinking like a scientist. As my daughter is finding out, this way of thinking is unique to science and changes one for life. So being among scientists, speaking the language of science again, is a bit like going home after a long absense. No one understands your habits of mind and even your wacky sense of humor quite like other scientists.


Here are some of my colleagues, staining the thin-sections with serum proteins specific for certain cells that have flourescent labels attached. We have two such labels, blue for neuron cell nucleii found in the hippocampus, and red for dividing stell cells to label adult neurogenesis in the dendate gyrus of the hippocampus.





To the right is an image of a montage of two images of our thin section taken with two different flourescent filters from a camera fitted to a bionocular mocroscope. The blue-labeled nuclei outline the mouse hippocampus. The tooth shape is the dentate gyrus, where we expect to see neurogenesis from dividing stem cells. The red labeled cells on the inside are the dividing stem cells. As we were playing with the microscope to get the images, Kevin said: "Imagine if we had done this 50 years ago! We'd be on our way to Stockholm!" To which Vint replied: "Or we'd have been locked up as nutcases for saying that adults actually have stem cells and that they do make new neurons."



This image is a close-up of the dividing stem cells taken with the rhodescence filter. Amazing--new neurons form in adults, in form and function! And neurogenesis in adults is important to the plasticity of the brain on into old age. You can teach an old mouse new tricks!

I am beginning to feel a little sad. When we finish this course, we will have run out of full-semester courses in the neurosciences. Most of my remaining courses will be in the Psychology Department over on main campus. That will be very interesting, too. But I will miss my neuroscience colleagues very much.

Two semester sweating together over neural cellular structure, immediate early genes, g-protein coupled receptors, ion channels, trasmitter production and function, the physiology of sensory experience, proprioception, motor activity, and the enteric nervous system. Not to mention identifying the caudate, putamen, cingulate cortex, the cerebellum, the cerebral peduncles, the cerebellar folia, and more. All of this has bonded us. I imagine that I will not forget Vint's zany anatomy humor. "These are the mammillary bodies--'Thanks for all the Mammillaries...'" And the menomics: "On old Olympus towering top, a Finn and German viewed some hops." This translates to the twelve cranial nerves: olfactory, optic, ocular-motor, trochlear, trigeminal, abducens, facial, auditory (vestibular-cochlear), vagus, spinal-accessory, and hypoglossal.

And my favorite for the functions of the cranial nerves: Some say Marilyn Monroe, but my brother says Brigite Bardot! Mmmm, mmmm. (sensory, sensory, motor, motor, both, motor, both, sensory, both, both, motor, motor).

Well, you get the picture. I have really, really enjoyed being back among scientists again. Like NAGC or ALPS--which is summer camp for gifted adults--it's another form of going home.

And you can go home again!

Home, home in the lab,
where the neurons and glia still play.
Where often is heard that discouraging word,
"Dr. Cunningham give back my brain!"

Midterms & Carnival of Homeschooling 63

The Carnival of Homeschooling is up over at Tami's Blog!

It looks to be very good, with articles about homeschooling in general, math, science, social studies, and more!

Check it out!

Unfortunately, I will be checking out the Carnival a few articles at a time during breaks in studying. See the molecule to the right? That's Serotonin. It is a neurotransmitter important to learning and memory--among other things.

I will rely much on serotonin for the rest of this week.

I just finished writing for two hours straight for my Special Education Law class. There was some information to remember about the purpose of law and human rights, but most of the test covered IDEA 2004 and two SCOTUS cases, which we had in front of us. I tabbed my statute in order to find information more quickly.
Now my hand hurts!





Unfortunately, I am not done yet!
I still have Neurobiology to go. That test is on Friday and there will be no notes or diagrams allowed.

And for this kind of class, you must know everything covered in the last 4 weeks of lecture.

Today, I spent some time reviewing G-Protein receptors (pictured to the left) and how they work.

Colorful, aren't they?

They are important in second-messenger signaling in the cell. A neurotransmitter attaches to the receptor outside the cell and this causes the receptor protein to change shape and release the alpha subunit of the G-protein, which in turn causes the phosphorilization of a protein kinase, and activates a cascade of messengers in the cell that can in turn activate a gated channel in the membrane, or activate or inhibit neurotransmitter vesicle movement, or even enter the nucleus and change gene expression.

So I remember something, but I've got to go back and memorize specific pathways and the conformation of specific protein kinases and so forth!

Somebody remind me of exactly why I am doing this to myself!

I have three full days of studying ahead of me before my Spring Break begins at 5 PM MST on Friday.