ADHD Research with Aditi Patil
Aditi Patil is a part-time junior at OHS, and spent this past summer researching the detection of ADHD at Yale. We spoke to Aditi about her experience doing so.
Pixel Journal: What are you studying/researching?
Aditi: I'm studying how researchers can use fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) to detect ADHD in adolescents. ADHD is especially hard to diagnose because it involves psychological and behavioral evaluation, which causes many over diagnoses because so many children have slight attention problems and misses those who are affected by the disorder but do not have severe symptoms. Thus, the spin for my research was to find a physiological way of diagnosing children with ADHD rather than psychologically. This involved the process of getting data from a past study, combining it with another study conducted at Yale, and coming up with my own original research. Not to go into too many details, but by using graph theory networks in the brain the scientists and I were able to find a connection between those who have ADHD and a certain type of brain network.
PJ: What brought you to this?
A: I was brought to this by myself actually. I reached out to tens and tens of research scientists in a range of universities and laboratories telling them about my interests, and only a few replied. This project struck out to me the most because I felt like ADHD is such a present problem to my generation that looking into it for research could be so beneficial, as well as the fact that neurology was a main topic that I knew I was interested in.
PJ: What are your hopes for this?
A: I hope to return next summer to the lab and continue to work on the project, and possibly compete in some research competitions wit my results.
