Universiteit Amsterdam: UVA: Checklists, Projects, Summaries & Vacancies

ADHD is highly heritable and one of the most common neurodevelopmental disorders in childhood. ADHD is characterized by substantial comorbidity including substance abuse, depression and anxiety. It is a neurodevelopmental disorder that typically starts during childhood or early adolescence. It is defined by age-inappropriate levels of inattention and/or hyperactivity-impulsivity. This interferes with the normal development or functioning of a person.

ADHD often remains undiagnosed in girls. It is common in all countries and affects the productivity, life expectancy and quality of life. The clinical presentation of ADHD is very heterogeneous. It is necessary to have a lifespan perspective on ADHD as it often persists into adulthood and because the clinical picture often differs between patients. It is a highly dynamic disorder.

Patients often experience that the services provides are not aimed specifically at ADHD. This lack of support contributes to people with ADHD experiencing

Psychological mechanisms are adaptations evolved to process environmental inputs, turning them into behavioural outputs that increase survival or reproductive prospects, on average. However, the environment in which these mechanisms evolved is different from the modern context. This is evolutionary mismatch.

Psychological adaptations refer to inherited, species-typical traits that develop reliably and have been retained by selection. It takes specific environmental cues as input and processes these inputs according to evolved decision rules. This leads to behaviour as output.

Mismatches can be classified along source (1), type (2), cause (3) and consequences (4). A mismatch occurs because of significant changes in input cues (i.e. intensity or quantity) (1) or the consequences of the mechanism’s output (2). A mismatch can be positive for the organism.

A forced mismatch occurs when a new environment is imposed on an organism. A hijacked mismatch occurs when novel stimuli are

Identifying reliable precursors of self-regulation early in development is important for early prevention of developmental problems. It appears as if longer fixation and less variation in fixation duration in infancy predicts better effortful control. Compliance in toddlerhood was not predicted by visual attention measures. Visual attentional measures in infancy may predict independent forms of self-regulation in toddlerhood.

Self-regulation refers to the ability to automatically or deliberately modulate affect, behaviour and cognition. Toddlerhood refers to a transitional phase during which the ability to inhibit dominant responses develops and external regulation is still required. Compliance refers to toddlers’ ability to display desirable behaviour in response to others. Effortful control refers to individuals’ ability to inhibit prepotent behaviours and perform less salient behaviours, detect errors and engage in planning. This is associated with compliance.

The development of self-regulation builds on simpler cognitive skills (e.g. visual attention). Visual

Developmental psychopathology focuses on the interplay of personal and environmental factors in the origin of mental disorders. This includes genotype-environment interactions and epigenetic encoding of life events (e.g. prenatal stress; abuse). Computational psychiatry uses mathematical models of cognitive and neural processes (e.g. decision making) to identify the mechanisms involved in mental disorders.

Evolutionary psychopathology focuses on biological models and concepts to understand the functions of the neural and psychological processes involved in mental disorders and how they have been shaped by selection during evolutionary history. It does not necessarily consider mental disorders as dysfunctions (e.g. it may reflect an adaptive process).

The two reasons for the evolution of vulnerability are trade-offs between competing traits or functions (1) and biological conflict of interest between individuals (2). Psychopathological conditions may arise from dysfunctional mechanisms or from functional mechanisms that produce maladaptive outcomes because the present environment