Principles of evolutionary theory, evolutionary psychopathology, and genetics

2015 ◽  
pp. 3-40
Author(s):  
Martin Brüne
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Selection ◽  
Human Brain ◽  
Psychosomatic Medicine ◽  
Genetic Variants ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Protective Effects ◽  
Changing Environments ◽  
Genes And Environment ◽  
Natural And Sexual Selection

Darwin’s work on evolution by natural and sexual selection is the central scientific framework in biology that explains how life developed through adaptation to changing environments. Evolution has been the driving force that has shaped the human brain and mind in the same way as it has formed somatic traits. Many adaptations pertaining to human cognition, emotions, and behaviour emerged in ancestral environments of evolutionary adaptedness, from which modern living conditions deviate in one way or another. Such ‘mismatches’ of evolved traits and current environments may cause vulnerability to dysfunctional operation of cognitive, emotional, and behavioural traits. Genes and environment interact in manifold ways, yet genetic plasticity may not only convey vulnerability to dysfunction. Instead, the very same genetic variants that may lead to dysfunction when associated with environmental adversity exert protective effects against dysfunction when environments are more favourable. These insights have yet to be acknowledged by psychiatry and psychosomatic medicine.

Textbook of Evolutionary Psychiatry and Psychosomatic Medicine

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Brüne
Keyword(s):  
Psychosomatic Medicine ◽  
Life History Theory ◽  
Regulation Of Gene Expression ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Adverse Experiences ◽  
Evolutionary Psychiatry ◽  
Traditional Approaches ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Natural And Sexual Selection

Psychiatry and psychosomatic medicine are concerned with medical conditions affecting the brain, mind, and behaviour in manifold ways. Traditional approaches have focused on a restricted array of potential causes of psychiatric and psychosomatic conditions, including adverse experiences such as trauma, neglect, or abuse, genetic vulnerability, and epigenetic regulation of gene expression. While essential for the understanding of mental disorders, these approaches have disregarded pertinent questions such as why the human mind is vulnerable to dysfunction at all. This Textbook of Evolutionary Psychiatry and Psychosomatic Medicine seeks to find answers to these questions by emphasizing an evolutionary perspective on psychiatric and psychosomatic conditions. It explains how the human brain/mind has been shaped by natural and sexual selection; why adaptations to environmental conditions in our evolutionary past may nowadays work in suboptimal ways; and how human cognition, emotions, and behaviour can be scientifically framed to improve our understanding of how people try to attain important biosocial goals pertaining to one’s status in society, mating, eliciting and providing care, and maintaining rewarding relationships. The evolutionary topics relevant to the understanding of psychiatric and psychosomatic conditions include the concepts of genetic plasticity, life-history theory, stress regulation, and immunological aspects. In addition, it is argued that an evolutionary framework is necessary to understand how psychotherapy and psychopharmacology work to improve the lives of patients with psychiatric and psychosomatic disorders.

scholarly journals The physical environment mediates male harm and its effect on selection in females

2017 ◽  
Vol 284 (1858) ◽  
pp. 20170424 ◽  
Author(s):  
Li Yun ◽  
Patrick J. Chen ◽  
Amardeep Singh ◽  
Aneil F. Agrawal ◽  
Howard D. Rundle
Keyword(s):  
Drosophila Melanogaster ◽  
Sexual Selection ◽  
Physical Environment ◽  
Selective Advantage ◽  
Laboratory Studies ◽  
Male Choice ◽  
Female Fitness ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Evolutionary Consequences ◽  
Natural And Sexual Selection

Recent experiments indicate that male preferential harassment of high-quality females reduces the variance in female fitness, thereby weakening natural selection through females and hampering adaptation and purging. We propose that this phenomenon, which results from a combination of male choice and male-induced harm, should be mediated by the physical environment in which intersexual interactions occur. Using Drosophila melanogaster , we examined intersexual interactions in small and simple (standard fly vials) versus slightly more realistic (small cages with spatial structure) environments. We show that in these more realistic environments, sexual interactions are less frequent, are no longer biased towards high-quality females, and that overall male harm is reduced. Next, we examine the selective advantage of high- over low-quality females while manipulating the opportunity for male choice. Male choice weakens the viability advantage of high-quality females in the simple environment, consistent with previous work, but strengthens selection on females in the more realistic environment. Laboratory studies in simple environments have strongly shaped our understanding of sexual conflict but may provide biased insight. Our results suggest that the physical environment plays a key role in the evolutionary consequences of sexual interactions and ultimately the alignment of natural and sexual selection.

scholarly journals Culture: The Driving Force of Human Cognition

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 654-672 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivan Colagè ◽  
Francesco d'Errico
Keyword(s):  
Driving Force ◽  
Human Cognition

Prevalence and Adaptive Impact of Introgression

2021 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathaniel B. Edelman ◽  
James Mallet
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Variation ◽  
Adaptive Evolution ◽  
Genetic Variants ◽  
Genomic Data ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
Adaptive Introgression ◽  
Changing Environments ◽  
Potential Benefits

Alleles that introgressed between species can influence the evolutionary and ecological fate of species exposed to novel environments. Hybrid offspring of different species are often unfit, and yet it has long been argued that introgression can be a potent force in evolution, especially in plants. Over the last two decades, genomic data have increasingly provided evidence that introgression is a critically important source of genetic variation and that this additional variation can be useful in adaptive evolution of both animals and plants. Here, we review factors that influence the probability that foreign genetic variants provide long-term benefits (so-called adaptive introgression) and discuss their potential benefits. We find that introgression plays an important role in adaptive evolution, particularly when a species is far from its fitness optimum, such as when they expand their range or are subject to changing environments. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Genetics, Volume 55 is November 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

The New Synthesis

2018 ◽  
pp. 235-245
Author(s):  
Erika Lorraine Milam
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Selection ◽  
Information Processing ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Genetic Information ◽  
Next Generation ◽  
New Synthesis ◽  
Genetic Information Processing ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Natural And Sexual Selection

This chapter discusses new understandings of humanity from the 1960s onward. It shows how a particular group of scientists struggled with the question of human nature by conceiving of natural and sexual selection as acting at the level of individuals, who in turn served as genetic-information processing units. A trait could not spread in a population unless it conferred some advantage to the individuals who possessed it, allowing them to contribute more copies of their genes to the next generation of that population than other individuals. These struggles are furthermore framed within a period when sociobiology was just starting to get a foothold in academics.

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