Connecting Biology to Behavior in ADHD: The Amygdala's Role

This post is the second in a series, “Connecting Biology to Behavior: Inside the ADHD Brain." Read the first post to learn about the role of dopamine in ADHD behaviors.

Your child shuts down on a difficult math assignment, blanks on a test, and tends to overreact; their emotions have taken over, rendering them incapable of making rational decisions. The currently accepted diagnostic criteria for ADHD do not include a lack of emotional control, however, research shows that emotional dysregulation often accompanies ADHD. The deficits in executive functioning and working memory that occur in ADHD interfere with learning from previous experiences. Therefore, kids with ADHD have more difficulty managing their emotions compared to their peers and often react to frustrating situations with impulsivity or anger, or by shutting down.

Our emotions are regulated in part by the amygdala, a structure within the brain’s limbic system. This peanut-size brain structure can wreak havoc on the ADHD brain, and when it takes over, all rational decision-making and goal-directed behaviors go out the window.

What is the amygdala and what does it do?

The amygdala is part of the primitive brain and its primary role is to keep us safe during a threat, real or perceived, via projections to the hypothalamus and brainstem, which regulate our autonomic nervous system’s fight-flight-freeze response. The amygdala also plays a significant role in emotional regulation via projections to the basal ganglia, which is involved in emotional processing, and projections to the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in emotional regulation. Additionally, the amygdala plays a role in learning through reward and punishment, attention, impulsivity, memory, and decision-making.

Research suggests that subregions of the amygdala may be smaller in children with ADHD than in neurotypical controls. Interestingly, these same subregions appear to be involved in ADHD symptomatology. In addition, disruptions in the connectivity between the frontal cortex and the amygdala may contribute to the difficulty ADHD individuals experience with self-regulation and goal-directed behaviors. The frontal cortex is responsible for higher cognitive processes, or executive functions, that help to regulate our amygdala when our emotions are high. The poor executive function skills that accompany ADHD make it difficult to step back from a stressful situation, like struggling with math homework, to problem-solve and evaluate how to proceed.

When the amygdala hijacks the brain

Kids with ADHD often get frustrated quickly, make something way more important than it really is, have trouble calming down once frustration sets in, and are often offensive when criticized. When stress and emotions are high, they react to the situation instead of responding to it because the feeling part of the brain takes over the thinking part of the brain. In his book Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ (1995, 2005), Daniel Goleman describes this as “amygdala hijack.” ADHD expert Thomas Brown, PhD, describes the intense emotional responses experienced by individuals with ADHD as flooding: “A momentary emotion that can gobble up all of the space in an ADHDer’s head like a computer bug can gobble up all of the space in a hard drive.” Lagging executive functions in the frontal cortex make it difficult to manage the flood of emotion from the amygdala. Despite the physiological clues, like heart pounding, muscles tensing, sweating, and nausea from activation of the autonomic nervous system, those with ADHD are often powerless to stop a volatile reaction.

How to manage extreme emotional responses and move forward

Goleman believes that identifying and understanding our emotions will lead to emotional intelligence, and subsequently self-motivation. ADHD expert Dr. Sharon Saline suggests practical strategies to help ADHD individuals respond to emotional triggers and keep their emotional equilibrium in check.

1. Learn to recognize your triggers and how your body is responding (your autonomic nervous system response).
2. Practice techniques to manage your emotions, such as breathing, changing your environment, acknowledging out loud you are upset or overwhelmed, and coming up with self-soothing statements (“I have been in this situation before and got through it”).

As parents and caregivers of ADHD children, we need to ask ourselves, “What does my child need?” since the anger, frustration, and avoidance behaviors are secondary to an underlying concern or fear. We can help our kids develop self-awareness around the physiological responses that often precede an intense emotional response by questioning them about how they were feeling when they were overwhelmed, frustrated, or angry. Finally, we can problem-solve with our kids to help them come up with coping strategies like deep breathing, walking away from a stressful situation, or thinking of something that makes them feel calm. (My ADHD son used to visualize standing under the towering rockets at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, his happy place.)

Help your child develop a growth mindset

Kids with ADHD live in the here and now, contributing to their intense emotions. In addition to executive function deficits, mindset may play a role in emotional dysregulation. Carol Dweck, a psychologist at Stanford University, has proposed two types of mindsets: a fixed mindset and a growth mindset.

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According to Dweck’s research, individuals with a fixed mindset believe they have a certain set of skills, and those skills cannot be modified or changed: You are good at something or you are not. Those with a fixed mindset are afraid of failure and feel if they are not very good at something there is no need to work at it. In contrast, individuals with a growth mindset view mistakes as learning opportunities to help them perform better in the future.

Children and adults with ADHD often have a fixed mindset and feel frustrated when they struggle to complete a task they believe they are not good at. With some practice, our ADHD kids can change from having a fixed mindset to having a growth mindset. According to Dweck, the key is to praise your child’s effort—for example, “I noticed when you were struggling with your math homework, instead of getting frustrated you took a break so you could refocus and find the resources to help you complete it.” Another approach when you notice your child’s frustration building is to point out how much they have already accomplished on a difficult task.