- ADHD may have evolved because foragers moved when food was scarce
- Survival rates have allowed ADHD to develop over the past 12,000 years
- READ MORE: What are the symptoms of ADHD?
ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) may not play a major role in survival in today’s society, but for hunter-gatherers it could have been life-saving.
ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder with symptoms such as difficulty paying attention, hyperactivity and impulsivity.
Now, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania are trying to determine the origins of the condition, finding that it may have developed at least 12,000 years ago.
The study asked hundreds of people to play a foraging video game to test how long participants would search for berries in one bush before moving to another – the same behavior as hunter-gatherers.
The team found that people with ADHD moved quickly to new bushes after failing to find berries and believe that old people may have survived because they evolved to be impulsive to move on when food sources were scarce.
Hunter-gatherers with ADHD may have had a better chance of survival because they were more likely to move quickly to another area when food in the region became scarce. This may mean they had a higher survival rate, allowing ADHD to develop over thousands of years
“If (these traits) were truly negative, you would think they would be eliminated over evolutionary time,” says David Barack, a philosopher and neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania and lead author of the study. The guard.
‘Our findings provide an initial data point pointing to benefits in certain choice contexts.’
An estimated 8.7 million people in the US have ADHD, of which at least six million are children.
Studies on ADHD have linked genetic factors to the condition, and some scientists are investigating brain injuries as the cause.
The team tasked 506 American participants with playing an online foraging game for eight minutes, and in that time frame they had to pick as many berries as possible from a digital bush.
They were given the choice to move on and stay in the current bush or move to another, and researchers found that people with ADHD were more likely to cut their losses and move to another bush more quickly than non-ADHD participants .
Participants were given directions for the foraging task at the virtual site and were told to collect as many berries as possible within the limited time frame. Participants with ADHD spent four seconds less in a bush before moving on to the next than participants without ADHD
Researchers found that people with ADHD were more likely to cut their losses and move to another forest faster than non-ADHD participants.
Researchers had participants complete a questionnaire to identify those with ADHD before playing the game.
The questions they asked included: ‘How often do you have difficulty concentrating?’ and ‘How often do you leave your seat in… situations where you are expected to remain seated?’
The study, published in The Royal Societyexplained that based on participants’ responses, researchers identified 67.3 percent of participants who tested positive for ADHD.
Researchers used a machine learning algorithm that scored the self-reported screening based on updated criteria for the disorder from the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Fifth Edition (DSM-5).
Participants were excluded if they completed fewer than 25 trials or if they reported misunderstanding the directions, bringing the final number of participants to 457.
The researchers tested for links between the participants’ foraging decisions and their self-reported ADHD scale scores and found that those who scored higher on the ADHD spectrum spent four seconds less in each spot and picked more berries than their non-ADHD counterparts.
Their findings shed light on how hunter-gatherers may have survived by moving to another area when food became scarce in one region.
Although the cause of ADHD remains unknown, the condition is usually passed on genetically, with family members of people with ADHD having an 80 percent chance of developing it themselves, the study said. National Library of Medicine.
“It is difficult to determine exactly how behaviors associated with ADHD have been adaptive in past environments, and these results are compelling because they demonstrate measurable differences in the foraging strategies employed by individuals with and without ADHD,” co-author Dan Eisenberg of the study. and associate professor at the University of Washington in Seattle New scientist.
“ADHD can be a serious problem, but it is a problem in large part because of the current circumstances,” he added.