A new study has proposed that the medications most often prescribed for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) do not actually impact attention networks, as previously thought. Instead, say researchers at Washington University of St. Louis, Missouri, the medications impact the body’s reward networks.

The difference might seem trivial, except the body’s reward system is central to the tendencies for numerous mental health disorders, including anxiety, depression, and substance use disorders. The realization that Ritalin is working its magic by manipulating the reward system could mean the drug might be helpful for other reward disorders. Drugs such as GLP-1 receptor agonists, that impact the body’s reward systems, might prove therapeutic for ADHD.

The study was released on December 24 in the scientific journal Cell. The lead author is Dr. Benjamin Kay, a neurologist and pediatric neurologist at Washington University. The study has dozens of co-authors!

The study used resting fMRI data collected from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study (ABCD Study), which has been a treasure trove of research data backing up many recent posts here on AddictionNews. The research was based on 11,875 children between the ages of eight and 11.

Discover explains how the researchers were able to tease out the impacts of ADHD drugs on the brain:

337 children had taken stimulants on the morning of the scan and a further 76 had a prescription but had not taken medication that day. The remainder had neither been prescribed stimulants nor taken stimulants before the scan.

The researchers realized they were onto something when there were no differences in the attention-related areas of the scans of those who took stimulants. There were significant differences, however, in the reward-processing areas of the brain.

The authors now speculate that, rather than ratcheting up the attention span, ADHD drugs impact the reward system. They “pre-reward our brains and allow us to keep working at things that wouldn’t normally hold our interest,” one of the co-authors told Discover. They found the drugs “mimic the power of a good night’s sleep.”

The relationship to sleep is an interesting observation, since sleep disorders accompany many mental health disorders, especially smartphone addiction. The ABCD Study tracks sleep, and children who slept poorly performed better in school when they had taken ADHD drugs.

The study’s lead author told Discover that “the improvement we observe in attention is a secondary effect of a child being more alert and finding a task more rewarding, which naturally helps them pay more attention to it.”

Stimulants such as Ritalin and Adderall boost levels of dopamine, a neurotransmitter signalling reward, and norepinephrine, a neurotransmitter that boosts alertness. The ADHD drugs produced no improvement in learning for children with adequate levels of sleep.

Dr. Kay told Smithsonian Magazine that it’s possible children with sleep problems are being misdiagnosed with ADHD, and vice versa. As for using GLP-1 drugs to treat ADHD, I could find no scientific literature with anything to say about the matter. It seems to me a promising area for research.

Written by Steve O’Keefe. First published January 15, 2026.

Sources:

“Stimulant medications affect arousal and reward, not attention networks,” Cell, December 24, 2025.

“ADHD Drugs May Target Reward Centers, Not Attention Networks,” Discover, December 31, 2025.

“How Do These ADHD Medications Work in the Brain? The Mechanisms Are Different Than Once Thought, a Study Suggests,” Smithsonian Magazine, December 31, 2025.

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