People with ADHD-like traits may have an evolutionary advantage when it comes to finding food in the wild.
In a new experiment, researchers found that people with hallmark traits of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, such as having difficulty controlling where they focus their attention and being restless, were more likely to have They discovered that they have better foraging strategies than people with the trait.
This finding leads researchers to speculate that ADHD may have evolved as an adaptive survival strategy, preventing individuals from exploiting resources in the same location and instead favoring exploration of new locations. This could explain why ADHD is so prevalent in humanity today, affecting hundreds of millions of people around the world.
“if [these traits] “If they were truly negative, you would think that evolution would not select for them,” says David Barak, a neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania. Said with nicola davis guardian.
“Our findings are an early data point and suggest benefits in certain selection situations.”
Barak and his team’s experiment involved 457 participants, who were tasked with picking as many berries as possible from a virtual bush on a computer screen in a limited amount of time.
Each time a participant clicks on a berry patch, the virtual bush becomes depleted. The individual was then forced to make a choice. You can either stay in the same field and reduce your berry yield, or you can spend valuable time moving to a new field.
Sometimes it took only a second to move to a new berry patch on the screen. In other cases it took 5 seconds.
Those who tested negative for ADHD were more likely to spend too much time in the berry bushes for optimal foraging. On the other hand, those with ADHD-like traits were more likely to leave the patch quickly and less likely to exploit the berry bushes. They also collected more berries by the end of the experiment.
This finding is supported by: previous researchsuggesting that a nomadic lifestyle is linked to genetic mutations involved in ADHD.
However, outside of foraging societies, ADHD traits are not always so beneficial.
Modern decision-making often takes place in situations where resources are abundant, always available, and never depleted. Constantly seeking rewards, caused by dysfunction of dopamine pathway in brain reward centera person with ADHD may go back and forth forever between tasks without completing anything.
The idea that ADHD-like traits are adaptive in some settings remains speculative and should be investigated more thoroughly by future research. For example, the ADHD test scores used in the current study do not necessarily indicate a proper diagnosis.
Still, this isn’t the first time scientists have tried to explain why ADHD traits are so prevalent in humans. Nor is this the first time that foraging benefits have been used to explain the global spread of the disease.
Previous research It turns out that people with ADHD tend to have longer and more circuitous search patterns.This may contribute to higher level of creativity.
and some research A study in rats showed that simulating parts of the mammalian brain (associated with more hyperactivity in ADHD patients) induced the rodents to leave their foraging areas faster. Suggests.
Taken together, these findings suggest that specific neural circuits somehow tune the brain for exploration-versus-exploitation decisions.
ADHD can cause serious problems in modern life. However, new findings suggest that such negative opinions may be largely circumstantial.
Differences in the way humans think and approach the world may be the reason for our great success as a species.
This research Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
