Through a new study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, researchers have discovered that some traits linked to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder they would perhaps have played a role in ancient human societies, particularly useful for gathering food.
Today we know that ADHD in adults is sadly more common than expectedand even if this causes countless problems during everyday lifethere is a specific reason why these traits have remained with us.
To discover its purpose in more depth, the team of scientists selected some people affected by the disorder and subjected them to an experiment; participants had to collect as many berries as possible in an online simulation game. From the results that emerged, people with ADHD were quicker to abandon areas without any virtual fruit, then collecting a larger number compared to the average.
Is it possible then that traits such as distraction and impulsiveness have had their usefulness? “Se [questi tratti] had been completely negative, in the course of evolution they would have been selected to disappear,” explains David Barack, philosopher and neuroscientist who led the study. “Our results are a starting point and suggest a possible advantage in certain choices.”
The researchers further explain that understanding which ADHD behaviors are a result of our ancestors’ adaptations is extremely difficult; but the study clearly demonstrated that There are substantial differences between search strategies applied by individuals with and without ADHD.
According to scholars therefore, this could be a characteristic “inherited from our times by hunter-gatherers”. Nonetheless, the symptoms negatively affect millions of people today and this research could prove crucial in the future to better understand the disorder. Likewise, we recently discovered what does ADHD look like in the human brain.