Studies have shown that students with ADHD often have an under-active prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is where our working memory is housed and operates from. If this area of the brain is reduced in volume, then our ‘brain work-space’ where we can perform mental work and operate coherent thought is reduced.
This means that the working memory in students with ADHD may not be able to exert control over intrusive and unrelated thoughts that enter their heads while they are trying to focus on a task.
While the prefrontal cortex is under-active in the brains of students with ADHD, the motor cortex has been found to be overactive. The motor cortex is responsible for planning and controlling our motor functions. This can lead to restless, fidgety, overly active behaviour that interferes with our ability to focus and sustain attention.
Students with ADHD find multitasking a challenge; they may struggle to stay focused during multi stage problems or instructions, and will often lose track or only complete one part of a task.
So why do they struggle to process the information that enables them to carry out these tasks? As mentioned in a previous blog:
‘we must attend to the incoming information in order for it to be efficiently processed, i.e. transferred from our sensory perception (visual or auditory) into our memory’.
The information is not processed because the ADHD student struggles to sustain attention, which is partly due to a poor working memory capacity.
