Treating Autism and ADHD With Legos
This is it, readers. This is the big one. The final episode of the first series regarding brain science — and it’s a monster of a discovery.
In the last article of this series, it was established the newfound role that the cerebellum plays in social interaction. Rats with a damaged cerebellum were found to have significantly different social behaviors compared to when they had a fully functioning cerebellum. The usefulness of this knowledge extends beyond our rodents friends, however. The behaviors exhibited in the rats were comparable to that of humans with a certain set of disorders.
“What this research suggests is that some of the ways we might be able to treat autism spectrum disorders, ADHD, or prefrontal and cerebellar damage is behaviorally, rather than through surgery or pharmaceuticals,” Swain says.
Mental afflictions like autism and ADHD have been increasingly prominent issues in our culture in the past few decades. These afflictions are often characterized, among many other criteria, by a social handicap. Eye contact avoidance, shying away from social interaction, and a lack of empathy are some of the commonly known symptoms.
Social behavior is mostly handled in the prefrontal area of the brain, which is why Swain was so interested to find out that damaging the cerebellum can actually have an effect on social interaction.
Knowledge of the root of a problem is the key to fixing the effect. While it has been generally accepted that autism and ADHD are disorders that stem from the prefrontal region of the brain, Swain’s research indicates that we may be attacking the wrong part of the brain in treating these disorders.
So, what is the proper way to treat these disorders? This is what Dr. Swain is currently working on researching, pending the approval of a tedious grant process. He thinks he could be onto something. After running a small pilot study on four kids in the Milwaukee area diagnosed with ADHD, he got the results he was looking for.
It should be first noted that results of a pilot study of four subjects cannot be regarded as scientific fact. It is merely an indication, which can grow into a full-sized study with some ambition.
Swain gathered testimonies from three confidants for each of the children – a behavioral therapist positively diagnosed each child with ADHD, and their teachers and parents gave behavioral reports.
The children were tasked to play with a toy that stimulated their spatial reasoning facilities for 20 minutes three times a week. These types of toys can include Legos, Lincoln Logs, puzzles, and other toys that involve shape matching and building.
After only four weeks, the results were quite dramatic.
“All of their parents said that they had less problematic behavior at home, their teachers reported that they were more focused and on-task in school, and according to the clinical psychologist, one of them was no longer diagnosable with ADHD,” Swain says.
It turns out Legos, of all things, can treat these disorders?
That is where Swain’s research takes him next. He is currently working on getting a grant approved that would allow him to perform this experiment on a larger sample of children as well as getting MRI imaging of their brains, which would provide a much stronger basis to back his hypothesis.
Until then, stay tuned to So What Science next week for a hard left turn into mechanical engineering to see how the problem of exploding flour is being solved at UWM. Cheers, fellow science nerds.
