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Quote by Marco del Giudice

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Evolutionary Psychopathology: A Unified Approach

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Marco del Giudice

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“Evolution in the cognitive niche has endowed our species with remarkable abilities such as language, abstract reasoning, and sophisticated mentalizing. These species-typical innovations have been accompanied by rapid changes in brain structure and functionality. While adaptations such as language are hugely beneficial, they are also likley to carry some costs. A number of authors have argued that vulnerability to psychosis is one of those costs -the price our species pays for its unique set of cognitive skills. From this perspective, there are no individual fitness benefits to psychosis proneness; vulnerability to schizophrenia and other psychoses is a general byproduct of our evolved design, and unfortunate combinations of genetic and environmental factors determine the onset of a full-fledged disorder in some individuals.”

“Even properly functioning defenses are subject to activation errors, evolutionary/developmental mismatches and maladaptive learning; moreover, mechanisms that are initially functional may become damaged or dysregulated following periods of chronic hyperactivation. In other words, conditions that start as adaptive response may sometimes morph into dysfuntions along the way.”