Why does taking a sip of coffee make someone who has adhd very sleepy instead of energized?
In: Biology
The idea behind stimulants having the weirdly opposite effect on those with ADHD is sort of in the name: They have “attention deficit” disorder.
First let me say that the brain is super complicated and this explanation is necessarily a severe simplification. In fact it is so complex there are still many things we don’t understand at all!
How it seems our brains work is that various thoughts, goals, interesting tidbits, etc. are all being thrown up from various parts of the brain such as memory, vision, hearing, touch, etc. There is a part of the brain which is in control of basically sorting through all these inputs and determining what is most relevant to pay attention to, and suppressing all that other stuff. In those suffering from ADHD that part of their brain isn’t doing its job adequately. The result is a lack of attention to any one thing and they end up jumping from thought to thought, and being hyperactive from having their attention continually seized by one thing after another.
What caffeine does is sort of wake that part of their brain up a bit so that it starts doing its job. In some cases its job is to suppress everything because the most important thing to focus on is sleep!
Latest Answers