Current Projects
Effects of Low-dose versus Normal-dose Psychostimulants on Executive Functions
in Children with ADHD
We hypothesize that the stimulant dose for controlling hyperactivity in patients with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is too high for aiding cognition. Most ADHD patients on stimulants are taking a dose targeting behavioural dysregulation (parents base feedback to doctors on the child’s behavior; no one uses cognitive tests to determine dose). We’ll test the prediction that ADHD patients will perform better on tests of attention, working memory, reading & math, when on half their dose.
ADHD is characterized by lower levels of dopamine (DA) in 2 brain regions, prefrontal cortex and the striatum. Prefrontal cortex is most linked to ADHD cognitive deficits and the striatum to behavioural problems. At doses most commonly prescribed for ADHD, stimulants primarily act on DA in the striatum. At low doses they work differently, increasing DA specifically in prefrontal cortex.
Eighty ADHD patients, ages 6-18, will be tested on a cognitive battery at UBC Hospital. Half will be tested first on their current stimulant dose and 2 weeks later on half that; half will be tested in the reverse order. Version A of tests will be used in Session 1 and Version B in Session 2. A pharmacy will compound each child’s regular dose and half that in identical capsules. Even the researchers won’t know who is getting which dose when. We’ll also test typically-developing youths not on stimulants to estimate practice effects of doing our tests twice, albeit different versions. Performance will be converted to Z scores for combining results on related measures. Each child will be his own control; we’ll compare performance on that child’s current dose and half that. Each family will receive a report of their child’s performance at both doses.
This study could have a major impact on medical practice and the standard of care for ADHD in Canada and worldwide, and might help many of those with ADHD to think more clearly, more easily pay attention, and make better use of their working memory for reasoning, problem-solving, and planning.
A follow-up to our Methylphenidate (MPH) studies with ADHD kids and normal adults – to look at effects of a low dose of MPH on the executive functions (EFs) and academic performance of university students. Who does MPH help and who does it hinder?
The optimal level of the neurotransmitter, dopamine (DA), in prefrontal cortex (PFC) is an intermediate level. Too much or too little is no good.
Psychostimulants like MPH increase DA in PFC.
Stress increases DA in PFC, and many university students are stressed these days.
We hypothesize that the combination of stress + MPH will increase the levels of DA in PFC best optimum and impair EFs and hence school performance, and that this will be particularly pronounced for students with the COMT genotype associated with more DA in PFC.
We are testing university students on placebo (Vitamin C) and on a low dose of MPH in a double-blind crossover design.
Can training balance improve children’s ability to pay attention, solve problems and/or control their behavior?
What if just 15 minutes a day, at home, doing simple balance exercises, could improve a child’s executive functions as well as his or her balance? The same or overlapping brain regions underlie both cognitive and motor functions. We believe that balance training has the very real potential to improve executive functions and we’re conducting a randomized controlled trial to test that. We are recruiting 8-12 year-old boys and girls who could use some improvement of their executive functions. Some children will be randomly assigned to do simple balance exercises at home for 15 minutes, 3 times a week for 12 weeks and others to a waitlist control group.
Possible Benefits to Mood, Quality of Life, Memory, and Executive Functions of Beloved Music with or without Social Interaction or Beloved Writings (e.g., Poetry, Stories, Psalms) for Adults Experiencing Mild Cognitive Decline
Music on iPods has been found to tap wells of emotion in older adults with significant cognitive decline, bringing back memories and remarkable cognitive reserve that had been thought lost.
Our goal here is to investigate 2 research questions:
1) Is music special? Might listening to writings that are meaningful to, and treasured by, a person with mild cognitive decline improve that person’s mood, cognition, and quality of life as much as meaningful and treasured music?
No one has looked at whether listening to beloved writings might be beneficial to older adults, much less how its benefits compare to listening to beloved music. We’ll break entirely new ground here. We hypothesize that music IS special and that listening to the spoken word without music won’t be as beneficial as listening to songs.
2) Does sharing the experience of listening to beloved music with a close friend or relative (someone who cares about you and who you care about) improve mood, cognition, and quality of life even more than listening to music alone on a machine?
Social interaction with people we care about and social connection are powerful needs. We predict that sharing the musical experience with someone close to you will yield greater benefits on our dependent measures than listening to music alone on a portable music player.
The Effect of an Enriched Karate Program on Executive Functions and Socio-Emotional and Academic Skills in Typically-Developing Children
Unlike other approaches to improving executive functions (EFs), traditional martial arts do not focus solely on training EFs or physical fitness but also address character (emphasizing values such as being a good person, respect, etc.), mindfulness (e.g., clearing one’s mind of thoughts and worries and focusing on the present moment). To further enhance the benefit of traditional martial arts for social-emotional well-being and EFs, graduate student and experienced TMA instructor, Fatimah Bahrami, created a comprehensive Traditional Cognitive Karate Program (TCKP), incorporating social and emotional training into the philosophy of Karate, and more cognitive skills and EF practice into Karate training routines.
Fatimah hypothesizes that 9 months of TCKP training will improve EFs and socio-emotional skills more than an active control condition (stationary bicycle riding) or wait-list controls, and that this improvement in EFs and socio-emotional skills will transfer to improvements in academic skills. To test this, 50 children per condition (150 total), 7-12 years old, will be recruited and randomly assigned (stratifying by sex and age). Children in both exercise groups will meet 1 hour, 2x/week for 9 months (1 school year). Assessments will be done immediately before and after the interventions and 6 months later.
Promoting the Well-Being of Inner-City Children, Families and Neighborhoods through Community Intervention: A Longitudinal Mixed-Methods Study of “Our Place”
Children in British Columbia (BC) are experiencing increasingly complex difficulties across multiple developmental domains, especially children in low-income, marginalized groups. There is growing evidence that early interventions to address disparities in children’s health promote optimal development.
Our Place (Promoting Local Access and Community Empowerment) is a collaboration of community-based organizations, local service providers and residents working together to support children and families across the lifespan in five of Vancouver’s inner-city neighbourhoods. Importantly, Our Place is a grassroots initiative developed by and for the local community. Our Place actively engages residents by removing barriers and building capacity within neighbourhoods to co-create solutions that target both individual and broader community needs. Community people report that Our Place is making a major difference in children’s lives, but no hard evidence has yet been collected.
Our Place approached us, proposing a partnership, to try to document if, how, and to what extent Our Place’s intersectoral partnership benefits children and families in Vancouver’s poorest neighbourhoods. Through a fundamentally collaborative, mixed-methods, action-oriented research approach, graduate student Lisa Ritland is seeking to obtain hard evidence on the effects Our Place is having.
A Qualitative Study of the Broader Socioemotional Benefits of the JUMP Math Curriculum
The goal of JUMP Math is for every child to enjoy learning math and to do it successfully. This study seeks to understand how this approach affects the teachers and students beyond quality math instruction and learning. By observing teachers and students during lessons, and interviewing teachers and students individually, we hope to discover the program’s effect, if any, on positive classroom climate, pro-social, helping behavior, empathy, cooperation, and students’ self-confidence and joy in being in school.
Collaborators: Tonje Molyneux (PhD student, UBC), KIm Schonert-Reichl (UBC), & John Mighton (JUMP Math).
Study of the Possible Executive Function Benefits of ‘Mathematical Thinkers Like Me’
We hypothesize that this program, which is centered around online collaborative problem-solving that supports student storytelling and community sharing about their ongoing journey as mathematical thinkers will have EF benefits. With the ‘Mathematical Thinkers Like Me’ (MLM) program, students collaborate online to solve rich, challenging mathematical tasks. Then use these experiences to tell evidence-based stories about their development as mathematical thinkers. Student voice is at the center of the MLM’s educational process, focusing on student success with rich, high-quality mathematics.
The opportunity to connect with other students is an initial trigger for interest, as are the novelty and features of the dynamic math environment. Interest is then sustained through collaborative problem solving and storytelling. This contrasts with the often individualized approach to math learning. As interest increases, we hypothesize that that supports the persistence and the generation of new challenges that are required for the development and maintenance of EFs. EFs become focal and accessible by connecting them to the collaborative practices that support success in math problem solving and learning. MLM challenges students to get good at collaborative practices and to tell stories about them -- practices such as turn-taking and balancing participation, holding on to one’s activated knowledge and questions while attending to the work of others in the math space, and engaging with the different solution strategies and observations of one’s collaborators. All of which use and challenge EFs, not in the abstract, but as part and parcel of an activity they care about.
Collaborators: Stephen Weimar (21st Century Partnership for Stem Education), Ann Renninger (Swarthmore), Miriam Rosenberg-Lee (Rutgers), & Darryl Adams (Rutgers).
Longitudinal Study of the Effects of Mother’s Mood on her Children’s Executive Functions
We are longitudinally studying the effects on children’s EFs of (a) their mother’s mood (more depressive vs. calmer or happier), (b) whether their mother took SSRIs when she was pregnant and (c) the child’s genotype for genes that affect serotonin and dopamine.
Collaborator: Tim Oberlander (UBC)
Normative Study of the Development of Executive Functions from 4 – 18 years of age
Our lab has recently completed data collection for a 5-year NIDA-funded study of the normal development of EFs, using diverse tasks tapping various aspects of EFs all given to each child, over a wide age range (4 - 18 years). We tested 1,080 children, >60 children at each age, roughly 50% male and 50% female, 50% higher and 50% lower SES per age; 15 ages and 14 tasks per age (2 sessions / child). This complements the Diamond lab’s past work studying EF development yearly from 4-13 years with a small battery of tasks and smaller number of subjects (Davidson et al. 2006).
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