Narrator:       This is Science Today. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD, is characterized by difficulty with sustained attention, distractibility, problems inhibiting impulses and hyperactivity. Blythe Corbett, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of California, Davis, says there's been some suggestion that ADHD in children is on the rise, but one of the biggest contributing factors is that clinicians are better at identifying these disorders.

Corbett:          When our generation was younger, we might have looked back and said, "oh, we had plenty of those kids in our classroom", but they were not given an actual diagnosis. Today, I think we're doing a much better job recognizing it earlier and then hopefully appropriately treating it.

Narrator:       Corbett took part in a study that found, for the first time, direct evidence that two brain areas fail to connect when children with ADHD try a task that measures attention.

Corbett:          There is functional disconnection it looks like in certain parts of the brain, but we believe that we can address it through providing behavioral supports.

Narrator:       For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin