8. Evolution and Psychopathologies reading Flashcards
how is the mind amazing but what is just as extraordinary?
The mind is amazing can remember hundreds if not thousands of faces ect. But just as extraordinary is its vulnerabilities.
what like the body was the brain shaped by?
There was never a plan for the brain, like every other part of the body it was shaped by natural selection.
Genetic variations in ancestors caused differences in brains that caused differences in behaviour which influenced how many children they produced. The result is brains with extraordinary capabilities but many vulnerabilities.
what can we maybe compare mental illness to?
normal illness
Principle with illness sometimes to serve good functioning e.g. vomiting or a temperature
what two hypotheses exist for mental health?
1) Mismatch: our bodies are unprepared to cope with modern environments
2) Trade-offs: everything in the body has advantages and disadvantages ie. Reproduction: natural selection maximises reproduction not health e.g. defensive responses: responses such as pain and anxiety are useful in the face of threats
what are misconceptions about emotions?
Several obstacles make understanding emotions difficult. Failing to recognise that negative emotions are useful is a big one. Another is failing to realise that emotions were shaped to benefit our genes and not us.
what are emotions part of and their functions?
Emotions are not part of a designed system- each emotion does not have one sole function but each has many functions and functions are served by multiple emotions.
what is an example of an emotion that is horrible but necessary
e.g. the emotion of jealousy is horrible and causes a huge amount of issue Buss reports that 13% of all homicides are committed by a spouse much of which are jealously driven. Point remains that evolution doesn’t care about feelings it cares about passing on genes. Two males one jealous one not- the partner strays. The mellow one may live a happier life but more chance of partner getting pregnant by another and thus loosing time whilst pregnant/ breast feeding before fertile again. The jealous individual has a greater reproductive success.
what theory explains anxiety?
Smoke detector principle
what is the smoke detector principle
- individuals with a capacity for anxiety are more likely to escape from dangerous situations in a present moment and avoid them in the future.
- just like immunity anxiety is needed like immunity is needed to but with too but immunity comes disease of its own- the same is the case with anxiety.
but what question needs to be asked about anxiety?
why is it so often excessive?
So why is anxiety so excessive?
Smoke detector principle explains a lot of useless anxiety. Systems that regulate protective responses e.g. vomiting and pain turn on the response whenever the benefits are greater than the costs, even if that results in false alarms. The costs of such responses tend to be low compared to the benefits of avoiding danger.
common anxiety disorders- what do they correspond to?
Indeed different common anxiety orders seem to correspond with good reason to different kinds of dangerous situations: e.g. phobia of small animals= fear of damage from animal, panic attacks= possible attack from predator or human, social anxiety= loss of social standing, fear of heights= fear of falling (Marks & Nesse. Fear and Fitness)
argument that fear is not innate though and experiment to support
A few fears are built in automatic responses, but most common fears are not exactly innate. Fear of snakes is not built in but the brain is prewired to learn it fast- Mineka et al., in 1970s
• Young lab-raised monkeys reach across a toy snake to get a treat
• But post watching one video of another monkey withdrawing in fright from the same toy snake created an enduring fear.
• Watching a monkey withdraw from a flower created no similar fear
• The brain seems prepared to learn to fear some cues much faster than to others.
what type of learning is a fear of snakes and why is this useful?
This is social learning of the most useful sort. Instead of a system that responds to only a few rigid cues, natural selection shaped a system that uses information from other individuals. Such fears can be transmitted from generation to generation.
in terms of anxiety what is the worst failure?
“ Few failures…are as unforgiving as failure to avoid a predator; being killed greatly decreases future fitness” Lima and Dill 1990
What are the effects for treatment of anxiety? Very generally
Understanding the Understanding the evolutionary origins and functions of anxiety does not suggest a special evolutionary kind of treatment, but, it nonetheless transforms Treatment.
What are the effects for treatment of anxiety? More specifically
Arguments about whether GAD And social anxiety disorder or fundamentally the same or different or unnecessary all are anxiety subtypes Each partially differentiated from ancestral precursor states to cope with dangers in different kinds of situations. Instead of seeking special explanations why some people have more than one anxiety disorder The Association of multiple kinds of anxiety types makes sense in light of the common evolutionary origins.
And evolution review also encourages setting aside abstract debate about whether anxiety disorders are mostly physical or mostly psychological and having attention instead to a personalised assessment of a possible causes of an individual’s anxiety.
how do evolutionary explanations for anxiety illuminate how treatments work
And evolutionary perspective also illuminates how treatments work. Antianxiety drugs do not correct a neurotransmitter deficit; they disrupt the anxiety system either and pieces. Behaviour therapy also changes the brain. The taxi via mechanisms that evolved to adjust anxiety responses on that or more dangerous. He is mechanism. Instead exposure therapy creates new inhibitory impulses from the frontal lobes that descend and prevent anxiety signals from getting to consciousness (Milad et al., 2006)
what are mood regulation systems vulnerable to and what can these be compared to?
vulnerable to Failure for the same evolution reasons of the body systems. Sometimes the failure is only apparent. Sometimes it is because of living in a modern environment. Sometimes it reflects trade-offs or the limits of what natural selection can do each deserves consideration.
how can the smoke detector principle explain normal mood?
The smoke detector principal explained some normal but nonetheless excessive mood responses. Low mood conserve calories and avoids Risk. High mood is expensive and can be dangerous. When outcomes are hard to predict, airing on the side of low mood and a provide advantageous especially in harsh environments.
how can an EP view of depression change approaches to treatment?
Understanding low mood as a useful response and depression as excessive low mood Suggest different approaches to treatment. Depression is caused by the situation, the view of the situation, and the brain. Treatment can change the situation, the view of the situation, and the brain. However, all three interact in tangled webs of causes, so addressing only one of them will miss many treatment possibilities.
how can an EP view of depression change understanding of how anti-depressants work?
This view has implications for understanding how antidepressants work. The idea that they normalise a chemical imbalance is appealing and helps to justify drug ticket but there is no evidence for any specific chemical abnormality specific to depression. It seems more likely that antidepressants do use of Physic pain what analgesics Do use of physical pain-they Disrupt a normal response system. People have wanted her antidepressants with effects on different brain chemicals all can be effective. There is no mystery here Aspirin ibuprofens and morphine all at once somewhat different things to do in the pain regulation mechanism. Different antidepressant act on different links in the new regulation system.
what are vulnerabilities to eating disorders influenced by?
Vulnerability to eating so this is influenced by genetic factors. If one twin has anorexia nervosa that the twins risk is much higher if they are identical twins with identical genes rather than fraternal twins for two different eggs. About half of individual differences in vulnerability contributed to genetic differences (Kaye et al.,2013).
but rather than genetically caused what can be said about eating disorders?
This makes eating disorders seems like a genetic disease caused by abnormal genes but it actually implicates rapidly changing environments (Weiss, 2008) Abnormal genes Causing serious eating problems would’ve been selected out. The alleles That influence the rest for me disorders are mostly genetic quirks That cause problems only in novel environments.
what are eating disorders a disorder of?
Like smoking substance abuse and obviously anorexia is a disorder of modern environments and most alleles That influence that are homeless variations in the natural environment.
recent study into genome of those with annorexia
A recent study analysed over 3400 anorexia nervosa cases, surveying the entire genome. It’s found one location in the entire genome that increased The risk of anorexia but the finding is not exactly a smoking gun. The allele is present in 48% of cases but also in 44% of controls and it increases the risk of AN by only 20% (Duncan, 2017). Eating disorders are not caused by abnormal genes They are caused by normal genes interacting with abnormal environments.
who proposed possible evolutionary benefit to eating disorders and what did they propose?
Evolutionary psychologists have proposed possible benefits from eating disorders. Surbey Noted that the cessation of the menstrual cycle in AN could postpone reproduction when times are bad (1987). Like many other species humans have mechanisms that turn off reproduction when available calories are insufficient to support a successful pregnancy (Ellison, 2003). The system monitors must only fat changes of energy availability. When weight declines rapidly, or When exercise is as extreme as that by ballet dancers or marathon runners, the mechanism turns off fertility even if bodyweight is normal.
