GradPSYCH - January 2012 - (Page 46)

depressed,” he recalls. He took a walk around campus to clear his head, and came up with a confidence-boosting mantra. “I said to myself, ‘Go east, go west, Wael is the best.’” It’s served him well. Since those early struggles, Mohamed has published nine studies, earning first author credit on four. For example, in one study, published in 2010 in Behavioral Brain Research, Mohamed and his colleagues found that early iron deficiency does cause ADHD-like symptoms in rats. In the study, they split 92 rats into two groups — with half nursed by anemic mothers, and the other half nursed by healthy mothers. Upon weaning, both groups of rats ate an iron-rich diet. However, once they had matured, the rats that had been deprived of iron as infants were slower to learn a variety of discrimination tasks. The rats had the most trouble with a test where researchers presented them with two dishes, one with cat litter and the other with mulch. If the rats dug into the cat litter, they’d find make children more vulnerable to cocaine use. However, other researchers have had contrasting results. “For now, I’ll lean toward behavioral treatments,” he says. Encouraging children with ADHD to take breaks during their homework sessions, for instance, and asking teachers to add periods of physical activity into their lesson plans, seems to work wonders, he adds. Homeward bound Of course, the best solution for early childhood iron deficiency is to educate parents about the importance of the nutrient for growing brains, and to make leafy green vegetables or supplements more affordable. That will require Egypt’s government to work toward decreasing poverty and improving its education system, says Mohamed, who hopes that the recent overthrow of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak might herald such changes. Mohamed wants to develop a graduate program to train Egyptian psychologists in Western techniques, but allows them to apply them flexibly to people whose religious or cultural beliefs are quite different from Americans’. a Honey Nut Cheerio, but if they dug into the mulch, they got nothing. Easy enough. The complicating factor, however, was the introduction of a mint or strawberry smell. The smell was randomly assigned — it didn’t give the rats any clue as to which dish contained Cheerios. The iron-deprived rats, however, couldn’t tune out this irrelevant information, and 85 percent of them failed to choose correctly in six consecutive trials, compared with just 23 percent of the control group. “As with iron-deprived children, these iron-deprived rats are bright, but they just can’t seem to focus,” says Mohamed. Then, the researchers gave the animals varying doses of generic Ritalin, and found that a small dose helped the iron-deprived rats succeed at the discrimination tasks, while larger doses only made them hyperactive. The control group’s performance was unaffected by the drug. The findings suggest that, as Mohamed suspected, Ritalin may help Egypt’s iron-deprived children better concentrate in school. Egyptian physicians, however, are hesitant to prescribe Ritalin for fear it may predispose children to cocaine addiction, Mohamed says. Preliminary data Mohamed has collected suggests that early iron deficiency and ADHD itself, rather than Ritalin, may 46 • gradPSYCH • January 2012 While solving the scourge of iron deficiency remains Mohamed’s primary goal, he also hopes to help modernize Egyptian universities and build a thriving psychology or neuroscience department of his own. Specifically, Mohamed wants to develop a graduate program to train Egyptian psychologists in Western techniques, but allows them to apply them flexibly to people whose religious or cultural beliefs are quite different from Americans’. For instance, some parents Mohamed has encountered believed that their inattentive children were a curse from God, or the result of possession by evil spirits. Mohamed tried to get them to see their children’s problems as the result of physical processes, though he never undermined or argued with parents’ deeply held religious beliefs. “In Egypt and many Muslim countries, we psychologists must work together with religious leaders,” he says. First, however, Mohamed must finish his PhD. He successfully defended his dissertation in October and is planning a monthlong trip to Egypt — his first time home in more than five years. “The first thing I will do when I get home,” he says, “is kiss my mother.” n 

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of GradPSYCH - January 2012

GradPSYCH - January 2012
Contents
Psychology grad school enrollment drops, despite record numbers of applicants
Students leave their iPods at home during ‘crunch time’
Media Picks
Chair’s Corner
Odd Jobs
Research Roundup
Hot careers: Video game design and development
Friends and co-workers
Time to bail?
Scaling Mount Publication
Need to heal thyself?
Staying connected
Matters to a Degree
Power up your PowerPoint
Dissertations vs. diapers
Searching for answers
Bulletin Board
Jobs, internships, postdocs and other opportunities
The Back Page

GradPSYCH - January 2012

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