Analysis of the Evolution of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Its Effect on University Students

Attention Deficit / Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is defined by the CDC as a neurodevelopmental disorder which can cause inattentiveness, impulsivity, and hyperactivity (Centers for, 2021). While this disorder has been studied from many angles, including characterizing the symptoms through many age groups, its causes from a genetic and environmental perspective, and what treatments can be most effectively used to treat people with it, one perspective that goes commonly unused is to view the disorder from an evolutionary perspective. Using data from genome-wide association studies such as the IMAGE project, two candidate genes were identified for association with ADHD (DRD4 and DAT1) which served as the basis for the study of the evolution of ADHD (Brookes et al., 2006). With the data on these genes pulled from the NCBI, GenomAD, ClinVar, and OMIM databases, the Evolutionary history of the variants of these genes which have shown statistical significance in their association with ADHD were analyzed. With that information, multiple testable hypotheses as to which situations and problems people with ADHD may have evolved to be better equipped to handle in the modern day were generated for testing in Alexis Albright’s section of this study.