Children who suffer from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have impaired brain function, most likely linked to a genetic condition occurring during pregnancy.
Researchers have uncovered conclusive evidence that key areas of the brain in ADHD sufferers do not develop as quickly as in those children without ADHD.
Professor Alasdair Vance, academic head of child psychiatry at the Royal Children's Hospital, said the areas were related to a child's ability to encode information, hold information and understand time and space.
"So their ability to read other people's body language, to pick up on the nuances of what their peer group are up to, would clearly be affected by the sort of developmental delays in brain development that we've identified," he said.
The research is about to be published in the world's leading biological psychiatry journal, Molecular Psychiatry, and Professor Vance, who is also head of academic child psychiatry at the University of Melbourne, believes it will result in better diagnosis and treatment of the condition.
"The most exciting part of this research is the opportunity to understand in detail the brain dysfunction in this group of children so we can better understand how, by changing the child's environment, facilitated by medication treatments, we can maximise their learning."
The study used functional magnetic resonance imaging of the brain in boys aged eight to 12 who had been clinically diagnosed with ADHD but were not on medication, and compared the images to non-sufferers of the same age. All the boys were given the same mental task and their brain functions were monitored.
Professor Vance said the study proved ADHD was not just a behavioural issue.
"If it was, one would expect the child's brain would be functioning normally and that at some level they are making choices to behave in this way. This suggests they are actually activating their brain differently when they are doing the same task as a healthy kid."
He believes the research strongly suggests ADHD is a genetic condition occurring most probably during the second trimester of a woman's pregnancy, but which can be modified through medication and by adapting the child's environment.
"I'm not saying that because you have such brain changes the only treatment is medication. Environmental cueing can help those compensatory brain networks to develop."
Helping teachers and parents understand how to more frequently cue a child with ADHD through such means as positive reinforcement when the child exhibits desired behaviour and through emotional connections that reward the child for better attitudes, are just some of the ways in which the condition can be helped, Professor Vance says.
"The number and quality of empathic, confiding, nurturing, flexible and adaptive human relationships can build resilience, build compensation or, if absent, make ADHD symptoms worse," he said.
"This research has direct bearing on better early detection of true ADHD, better recognition of severity of that true ADHD and the possibility of better targeting the use of medication treatments and pyschological and social treatments to maximise the child's ability to learn."