Every signal in NeuroSpicy traces back to a paper, a model, or a clinician’s observation. 42 sources across 12 themes. We cite them inline in the Learn articles too, because cycle data shouldn’t be hidden in journals.
The theoretical models we build on.
The unifying executive-function theory of ADHD that frames how we think about regulation capacity.
The reference handbook on adult ADHD assessment and treatment.
The cognitive-energetic model: ADHD as a state-regulation problem, not just attention.
Recasts ADHD primarily as energy dysregulation. Direct inspiration for the energy-tracking core of NeuroSpicy.
Critical re-evaluation of the dominant dopamine model. Pushed us toward the broader energy-state framing.
Why ADHD brains vary from themselves, and what that variation looks like.
Separates the root of ADHD from the everyday problems that grow out of it. Across the treatment studies it reviews, the ones aimed at the root, mainly medication, improved more areas of a child's life than the ones aimed at a single problem.
Reaction times that swing from moment to moment within a task are one of the most consistent findings in ADHD, across ages, tasks and samples. That is variability measured in a lab session rather than across days, and it is why we treat a brain varying from itself as worth measuring.
Takes within-person variability past reaction times and into what people are thinking about from one moment to the next.
Mood as a core ADHD feature, not a comorbid afterthought.
Across 22 studies, adults with ADHD reached more often for regulation strategies that do not help, like suppression, and the authors argue emotion dysregulation belongs among the core features. The studies were few and varied, so the case is still being made.
Quantifies the size of the emotion-dysregulation effect across studies.
Eighty studies confirm emotion processing is reliably harder across ADHD. Why we expect telling feelings apart to take practice.
Around one in five adults with ADHD struggle to put words to feelings at all. The starting point check-ins train against.
The affective science behind treating energy, mood, and emotion as three separate, trainable signals.
All feeling decomposes into valence and arousal. The theoretical basis for tracking mood and energy as two independent axes, not one scale.
The defining review on what separates emotion from mood: duration and cause. Behind the "three clocks" framing.
Emotional granularity (naming feelings finely) predicts better regulation. Why we push past good and bad.
Naming a feeling turns its volume down on its own. Why a ten-second check-in does real regulatory work.
How well you can read your own internal state, often impaired in ADHD.
Why we ask you to log in the moment, not retrospectively: real-time interoception is harder for ADHD brains.
Direct measurement of interoceptive accuracy in adult ADHD.
Practicing interoception (which is what tracking is) improves emotion regulation strategies downstream.
The methodology behind 10-second check-ins.
Validates the EMA approach: short, frequent self-reports surface patterns clinical visits miss.
Direct precedent for app-based ADHD symptom tracking over months, not days.
Why the boom-bust cycle hits ADHD brains hard, and what recovery actually requires.
Maps the specific shape of ADHD burnout in adult work life.
Foundational evidence that recovery is not just rest. Different recovery patterns have different effects.
Reframes pacing from passive ("rest more") to active ("modulate effort across days").
Fourteen trials in chronic fatigue syndrome found pacing reduced fatigue and distress, most of all when people built their activity up gradually. It is a different condition from ADHD, so we borrow the idea and not the numbers.
Hyperfocus is a feature, not just a bug. This paper traces the cost when it tips into burnout.
Behind the Home card's suggestions for a run of low days.
Over four days of movement sensors and twelve mood ratings a day, people with ADHD felt more positive at the times they had moved more than their own average, most of all in combined-presentation ADHD. It watched people rather than testing a walk, so it shows a link and not a cause.
In 242 adults tracked for two weeks, movement and energy each predicted the other later the same day, and no path ran from mood to energy. It is why we treat mood and energy as two readings rather than one feeding the other.
Across 105 randomized trials, planning and doing chosen activities reduced depression in adults about as well as other therapies did, held at a year, and helped by a smaller amount when people did it on their own. It is behind the Home card suggestion for a run of low-mood days.
An earlier review of 26 trials found the same benefit and describes scheduling activities as the core of the therapy.
Why ADHD energy patterns are inseparable from the sleep system.
Direct neural evidence that ADHD attention dips look like micro-sleep intrusions.
Frames ADHD partly as a chronobiology problem, supporting our peak-window / dip-window signals.
ADHD is not only deficits. The strengths matter for the framing.
Why we celebrate, not just diagnose. The strengths-based framing comes from this line of work.
Behind the social features (sharing energy with friends) is research showing connection matters more, not less, for ADHD wellbeing.
Practical adult-ADHD strategy book that informed early product framing.
How we compute what we compute.
Cohen’s d underpins the SD-scaled effect-size approach we use in Energy Drift and Mood Drift.
Why last night shapes today, and why ADHD sleep runs late.
Adults with ADHD show melatonin onset and sleep shifted roughly 90 minutes later than neurotypical adults.
The whole circadian system runs late in ADHD with delayed sleep, not just bedtime.
The review establishing delayed sleep timing as the signature ADHD sleep pattern.
Over two weeks of wrist trackers and sleep diaries, teens with ADHD swung more from night to night in bedtime, wake time and sleep length than their peers. An average hides that, which is why we look at the spread of your nights and not only the middle.
The more ADHD traits you carry, the more executive function a short night costs you.
In 2,115 first-year doctors with wrist trackers and a daily mood question, bigger night-to-night shifts in wake time and sleep length went with lower mood the next day. The links were small and the study watched people rather than changing their sleep. It is behind the Home card's suggestion to keep tomorrow's wake time close to today's.
We’re collecting credits for the researchers, clinicians, and advocates whose work lives inside this product. If you should be on this list (or know who should), tell us.
The Learn library translates these papers into the day-to-day decisions NeuroSpicy makes for you, like why a certain signal fires, what burnout actually looks like in your data, or how recovery rebuilds capacity.