ADD Meditation and the Brain

From the Creativity at Work Newsletter, December 2004

In this issue:
* Creativity and ADD
* Meditation and the Brain
*UNESCO Children’s art project:

Creativity and ADD

The use of drugs to treat children who are disruptive or inattentive in school — children with attention deficit disorder (ADD) — has been highly controversial for decades. The assumption was that with treatment, kids with ADD outgrew the condition. But as Morley Safer reports in a 60 Minute news story (2009), the disorder isn’t just for kids. Adult ADD has created a whole new market for the drug industry, which claims that 8 million American adults now have this mental illness.

David Neeleman CEO of Jet Blue, says he always knew his brain worked a little differently from the rest

“I scored so low on the English portion of the ACT test that my counselor hauled me in and said, ‘David, had you just answered ‘C’ on every question, you would’ve done better. You would’ve done 30 percent better than what you did,’” says Neeleman.

He spent years in various jobs, in a sort of limbo, before he realized he had a clear-cut case of ADD. Even so, he’s a huge success. Jet Blue, the low-cost, no-frills carrier that has shaken up the airline industry.

Neeleman says many of his out-of-the-box ideas are thanks to his ADD. “In the midst of all the chaos in your mind, and all of the disorganization, and all the trouble getting started, and procrastination, your brain just thinks a little bit differently,” he says. “And you can come up with things.”

Ideas like e-tickets, or ticketless travel, which is perfect for someone who is always losing things, and live TV, is making a his company profit while most of the airline industry is in trouble. But having finally discovered he had a certifiable medical condition, Neeleman decided to do absolutely nothing about it.

“I kind of had this feeling that if I took this pill, it may kind of cure me or something and then I’d be like everybody else,” says Neeleman

He says that many ADD sufferers are attracted to high-risk or entrepreneurial careers. And his list of people he thinks may have ADD include Bill Clinton, and Richard Branson.

Is there a connection between ADD and creativity?

There’s speculation that some great figures in history had ADD and led tortured but productive lives — Leonardo Da Vinci, Pablo Picasso, Winston Churchill. And, ADD websites claim that Thomas Edison had ADD.

“Do you feel almost kind of superstitious about it in a certain way,” asks Safer. “That if you take the pill, all of these super-bright ideas will be gone and I’ll be just a tedious paper pusher?”

“Yeah, I feel that. I feel like I may blow a circuit,” says Needeman. “I feel like if I take the pill, I may be dependant on something that, you know, may or may not be the best thing for me. So why even mess with it?”

(excerpted from 60 Minutes)

Brain Power

I received an interesting tidbit from Chic Thompson (author of What a Great Idea). He says your brain generates about 10 watts of electricity—not enough to light a city, but enough to imagine what an ideal city might be like. Children participating in a UNESCO project have done just that:

UNESCO has created an online forum called “My City’s Scenes and Sounds” for Young Digital Creators to share a vision of their city, employing digital sounds and images. The website also offers instructions for teachers hoping to implement this project in the classroom.

A scientific inquiry into the benefits of meditation:

Scans of Monks’ Brains Show Meditation Alters Structure, Functioning

Mental discipline and meditation can change the workings of the brain and allow people to achieve different levels of awareness, according to researchers at the University of Wisconsin.

“What we have found,” said Davidson, a neurosurgeon at the W M Keck Laboratory for Functional Imaging and Behaviour at the University, “is that longtime practitioners showed brain activation on a scale we have never seen before.

“Their mental practice is having an effect on the brain the same way golf or tennis practice will enhance performance.” He said it “demonstrates that the brain is capable of being trained and physically modified in ways few people can imagine.” The new findings are the result of a study between Davidson and Tibetan Buddhist monks at the home of the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India.

Sources: http://www.spiritinbusiness.org/new/images/Meditation.html