How do the medications work on the brain?
We know the first step of how medicines like the stimulants work, but we don’t know many other things. We know that they increase dopamine and norepinephrine, which are important neurochemicals, in regions where those chemicals are being released normally. We know that they enhance the amount that’s available to those neurons. But we don’t know if that is important in all of the brain regions that have those chemicals, or if they’re interacting in more complicated ways. We just flat-out don’t know. … Why use a stimulant, and why not a tranquilizer? People have a hard time understanding that. … The first person who found out that stimulants can be helpful for hyperactive children was Charles Bradley. And he guessed, or hypothesized, that they must be stimulating some of the centers that allow inhibition and self-control more than they stimulate other parts of the brain. That was in 1937, and that’s still a pretty good explanation of what we know. So we haven’t progressed as much as
