And so to blog about the intellectual elements of the ADDA conference. The bearded man to your left is Dr. Tom Brown, a renowned ADD specialist and author of the book with all the goldfish.
Dr. Brown gave the keynote on Saturday morning, with much nicer PowerPoint slides than I make at work. Many people were moved by his anecdotes and research findings, all of which supported his theory that ADD is really an impairment in executive functions.
What are executive functions? My understanding is that they are the bits of your brain that help you manage your day-to-day life. But perhaps Dr. Brown's chart would explain it better:
As you can see, the brain bits in question are Activation, Focus, Effort, Emotion, Memory and Action (all of which are fleshed out here). Everyone is naturally better with some of these functions than others. For example, I have trouble with working memory. I can easily tell you what I wore for Halloween from 1985-1995, but I never remember what I'm supposed to pick up at the store. I also don't know what Jen wants for breakfast. Ever.
People with ADD, however, have significant impairment in enough of these executive functions to totally screw up their day. Of course, there are numerous ways to manage your ADD (medication, coaching, etc.) but one of the best ways is to outsource your executive functions completely. Say, to your partner. After Dr. Brown's speech, Jen started introducing me as her Executive Function to every new person we met.
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