Tai Chi Training for Children With ADHD

Summary

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) has tremendous individual and societal impact, and the effectiveness of current standard treatments is limited. We examine a novel treatment that could remediate the core features of ADHD and thereby contribute to sustained improvements in behavioral control. This approach is motivated by mounting evidence that children with ADHD show difficulties with motor control, and that these motor deficits are strongly associated with the core behavioral features of ADHD. We employ Tai Chi, targeting improvements in well-established behavioral and physiologic measures of motor control, and with this, improvements in ADHD symptoms. The proposed study offers immense potential for the development of novel therapeutic approaches for ADHD with little risk of adverse reaction.

The over-arching goal of this proposal is to examine a movement-based mindfulness training as a therapeutic intervention for children with ADHD. This approach is motivated by two complimentary lines of evidence: 1) Children with ADHD show impairments in motor control that parallel (and correlate with) core deficits in behavioral control that define the disorder. 2) Gains in cognitive and behavioral control have been observed in adults learning Tai Chi, dance, or meditation. These lines of evidence provide substantial motivation for our proposed investigation of movement-based mindfulness training in children with ADHD. Specifically, we propose to evaluate an established Tai Chi-based intervention. We chose this approach for a number of reasons: 1) Tai Chi is among the most well-established movement-based interventions with documented therapeutic effects, including cognitive effects. 2) While many movement-based approaches show evidence of yielding cognitive improvements Tai Chi provides excellent opportunities for engagement of 8-12 year old children in the form of the collaborative game "push hands." 3) Tai Chi instruction consists of gentle movements that can be practiced even by those with physical limitations, and is readily available in the United States so the protocols developed in this study will be straightforward to deploy at a national level.

Hypothesis: After participating in a Tai Chi program, children with ADHD will show improvements in behavioral and physiologic measures of motor control. We further expect movement-based training will result in decreases in ADHD symptom severity.

Conditions

• ADHD

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Tai Chi

6-8 students will be enrolled in 8 weeks of Tai Chi instruction, with two 1-hour sessions per week. Students will be requested to practice from recorded materials at home three times a week for 15-30 minutes each session, and parents will be asked to keep a log of at-home practice. Class sessions will consist of warm up (qi k'ong), postural and breathing exercises, Tai Chi form practice, and Tai Chi games (including push hands). Practice will consist of warm up, followed by practice of selected pieces of the form. Children on stimulant medications will remain on these medications during the training period (though they will be asked to stop medications one day prior to motor and cognitive testing pre-, mid- and postintervention).

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Hugo W. Moser Research Institute at Kennedy Krieger, Inc.

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Stewart Mostofsky, MD · Hugo W. Moser Research Institute at Kennedy Krieger, Inc.

Study Design

Allocation

NA

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

NONE

Model

SINGLE_GROUP

Eligibility

Min Age

8 Years

Max Age

12 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2014-07-17

Primary Completion

2020-01-15

Completion

2020-03-15

Countries

• United States

Study Locations