News

ADHD and creativity, Positive aspects of ADHD

ADHD awareness month 2022 (1)

Martinehoogman

Oct 2022: Our group is involved in two pubic events during the ADHD awareness month 2022.

On the1st of October group members Lessa, Lisa and Rowen organized a live experiment at the Donders Institute Open Day. In general, the open day attracted 1000 visitors of all ages. Also at our live experiment it were busy times. Visitors filled out the ADHD symptom rating scale and performed the Alternative Uses Task. Here you should come up with alternative uses for a known object. The results for both the questionnaire and the task were put on a post-it, which was pasted on the wall. In the picture you can see a nice distribution of the scores….do we see a positive correlation….? Well done every one! Thanks for visiting us.

Lab members Lessa Schippers and Lisa Horstman on the Donders Open Day: results of the live experiment

Children could work on the Alien Fruit Task, drawing a picture of fruits from outer space. This nicely matched the talk from our national space traveler, Andre Kuipers.

Our second contribution to ADHD awareness month will be on the Leiden City of Science event on the 15th of October. More about this event later.

Verslag van Lessa: Op zaterdag 1 oktober was de open dag van het Donders Instituut, in het kader van Weekend van de wetenschap maar ook voor ADHD awareness month. We waren goed vertegenwoordigd met Lisa, Lessa en Rowen.

Tijdens de open dag hebben we een live experiment gedaan om de correlatie te laten zien tussen ADHD kenmerken en creativiteit. Bezoekers deden de alternative use task, waarbij het de bedoeling was om zo veel mogelijk alternatieve gebruiken te vinden voor een alledaags voorwerp, in dit geval een krant, een schoen of een baksteen. Daarna vulden ze een vragenlijst over ADHD kenmerken in. Op de muur was een grafiek gemaakt met op de x-as ADHD kenmerken en op de y-as creativiteit. Met een post-it konden bezoekers aan de hand van hun scores hun naam in de grafiek plaatsen. Aan het eind van de dag hadden we een mooie positieve correlatie tussen ADHD en creativiteit.

Speciaal voor kinderen hadden we de alien fruit taak. Hierbij tekenen de kinderen hoe zij denken dat fruit er op een buitenaardse planeet uitziet. Dit was heel toepasselijk, aangezien André Kuipers ook aanwezig was voor een presentatie! Dit was een mooi evenement om ons onderzoek op de kaart te zetten en mensen meer te leren over ADHD en creativiteit!

ADHD and the Brain, Other, Positive aspects of ADHD

Making new friends in Bath, UK

Martinehoogman

Sept 2022: On the 30th of September, Martine met up with Punit Shah, Graeme Fairchild, Lucy Livingston, Esther Walton and Tom Lancester from the University of Bath. While enjoying hot chocolate (with cream and marshmallows) and cake at the Pump Room near the roman baths, the topic of neurodiversity (the new journal, mutual interests and comparing ASD and ADHD research) and of course ENIGMA projects were discussed.

Looking forward to future collaborations!

ADHD and creativity, Positive aspects of ADHD

Donders Open Day 2022

Martinehoogman

Sept 2022: Come and visit the Donders Open Day! On the 1st and 2nd of October we will open up to families, neighbours and everyone else who is curious about the Donders Institute in the weekend of Science. Our research group will also be present to perform a live experiment on creativity and ADHD. The day will start at 11 a.m. and will last until approximately 4 p.m. It is not necessary to sign up.  Check out more here.

Positive aspects of ADHD

We won the Open Science Award 2022

Martinehoogman

Sept 2022: We, Lessa Schippers, Lisa Horstman, Jeanette Mostert, Corina Greven , Janneke Zinkstok from the Radboudumc, and Hans van de Velde and Rob Pereira from Impuls & Woortblind won the Dutch Open Science Award 2022 at the Open Science Festival at the VU in Amsterdam. The award was presented by the Dutch minister of Education, Culture and Science, Robbert Dijkgraaf. We won the award for our collaborative project on positive aspects of ADHD. This project was a co-creation between the Radboudumc and Impuls & Woortblind from the start of the project until the end of the project.

It was a very festive event with a lot of positive vibes. We all felt it was very excited to be there and to engage in open science. We were inspired by the work done by others and intend to use the prize money for a gathering to make new collaborative plans!

If you want to see more from the festival, the plenary sessions can be viewed here.

ADHD and creativity, Positive aspects of ADHD

Keynote lecture for Martine at the Australian ADHD Professionals Association Annual Conference 2022

Martinehoogman

July 2022:

Australian ADHD Professionals Association

July 2022: Martine presented her work on positive aspects in ADHD at the Australian ADHD Professionals Association Annual Conference 2022 in Sydney (Virtual). The members of the AADPA come from a range of fields including academia, clinical practice (psychiatry, paediatrics, psychology), coaching, education and allied healthcare.  The 2022 hybrid conference, “ADHD Coming of Age” was attended by the largest gathering of ADHD professionals in Australia working together to create better life outcomes for individuals with ADHD and their families.

AADPA Conference and Events

“I had the pleasure to visit Australia twice already, but not this time. I did the talk virtually. This means missing out the opportunity to interact with the audience but does save a lot of travel miles! So I guess I would have to do with the Waalbrug in Nijmegen instead of the Harbour Bridge in Sydney, but who can tell the difference anyway 😉” Martine

Positive aspects of ADHD

Lessa successfully defended her masters thesis

Martinehoogman

July 2022: Today cognitive neuroscience master student Lessa Schippers presented her research project for the master internship. She investigated, using quantitative methods, the relationship between self-reported positive aspects of ADHD and ADHD traits in the general population. The data that she collected showed that people with many ADHD symptoms also experience more hyperfocus, sensory processing sensitivity and cognitive flexibility. Learning more about positive aspects of ADHD might benefit self-esteem and coping with the dificulties associated with ADHD. Lessa’s work is of high quality: She can be very proud of her accomplishments! Lessa, Martine Hoogman, and Corina Greven, will together prepare the manuscript for submission to a scientific journal. We are happy that she will stay on as a research assistant in our lab for a few more months.

Positive AspecTs In ADHD (PATIA),is Lessa’s project, but patia is also a butterlfy. The image of a butterfly not only matches the topic of her research but also her internship: colorful, transitional and positive!
Cheers Lessa!
ADHD and creativity, Positive aspects of ADHD

Article on ADHD and ASD symptoms in relation to creativity accepted for publication

Martinehoogman

July 2022: Proud to share our article on creativity and ADHD and ASD symptoms. We show (again) that having more ADHD symptoms is associated with a higher performance on divergent thinking. People with ADHD and people without a diagnosis, but with many ADHD symptoms, are good at finding alternative uses for a known item/product, a very useful skill in current times where we have to think about alternative ways to use energy, housing, living space etc. Many thanks to Marije Stolte (UU), Victoria Trindade Pons (UMCG), Priscilla Vlaming (RUMC), Babette Jakobi (RUMC), Barbara Franke (RUMC), Evelyn Kroesbergen (RU), Matthijs Baas (UvA) and ofcourse NWO-Veni and ZonMW.

Other

NWA-wecom grant for our ADHDplaza project

Martinehoogman

June 2022: This week we heard that the ADHDplaza project, initiated and set up by Martine Hoogman and Jeanette Mostert, was awarded the NWA science communication grant (50k) from the Netherlands organisation for scientific research (NWO). We are very happy with this news!

About the project

Martine Hoogman and Jeanette Mostert (departments of Psychiatry and Human Genetics, Radboud University Medical Center) have obtained an NWA science communication grant (50k) for their ADHDplaza project. Pilot data indicated that knowledge about ADHD in youngsters is limited, but the need for information about ADHD is high in this group. To inform adolescents about ADHD, Martine and Jeanette have set up a consortium of Dutch ADHD experts and collaborated with the Dutch organization for people with ADHD, dyslexia and dyscalculia Impuls & Woortblind. In their project, PhD students will visit middle schools to bring information about ADHD, but also to collect information about what they want to know and learn about ADHD. The expertise that is present within the consortium is used to answer those questions in an attractive manner, and will be posted on the ADHDplaza platform. This way the information will become available for all (young) people in the Netherlands. This project is also aimed at training science communication skills in young researchers in the ADHD field, a valuable quality that they can add to their CVs. More information will become available soon on ADHDplaza.nl.

ADHD and creativity, Labmembers

We welcome Han Fang as a new PhD student in our group

Martinehoogman

June 2022: Han Fang is joining our lab from September 2022 onwards, for a 4 year PhD project. She was successful in obtaining a Chinese Scholarship Counsel Fellowship and will work on a project that continues where the NWO veni project on ADHD and creativity ended. This project is entitled’ ADHD and creativity: a deeper understanding of one of ADHD’s strengths. Warm welcome Han!

ADHD and creativity, ADHD and the Brain, Labmembers, Positive aspects of ADHD

Students Nam, Feline and Rowen are starting their projects in our lab

Martinehoogman
Nam Phuong Le
Feline van Agten

June 2022:

Nam Phuong Le is a first year master student Medical Biology, Radboud University. She will join our lab to write a review article on the topic of strengths in ADHD and ASD.

Feline van Agten is a Cognitive Neuroscience master student from the Radboud University. She will join our lab from September 2022 until Juli 2023 and will work on a project that is looking into neuroimaging, creativity and ADHD.

Rowen Riezenbos is a student Medicine. For her bachelor internship she will join our lab for 3 months, starting in September 2022. This internship is about learning the basics of scientific research. Her project is on ADHD, creativity and schoolperformance in adolescents (picture will be added).

Nam, Feline and Rowen, we hope you will have a good time with us, and learn a lot!