The New Scientist explains that while we are all medicating our children for this unwanted "disorder", at one time there may have been an evolutionary benefit of ADHD. Technically it serves no such benefit to civilized, modern day people, but they argue that perhaps the gene that causes ADHD once did aid in the survival of nomadic tribes that needed to always be doing something and moving.
The nomads' active and unpredictable life centred on herding might benefit from spontaneity, says Ben Campbell, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, US, who was involved in the new study.
"If you are a nomad then you ought to be little more impulsive than if you are settled," he says. "You should be a little quicker on the trigger."
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