Schizophrenia genes 'favoured by evolution'
Sequences linked to brain disorder show hallmarks of natural selection.
The genes that underpin schizophrenia may have been favoured by natural selection, according to a survey of human and primate genetic sequences. The discovery suggests that genes linked to the debilitating brain condition conferred some advantage that allowed them to persist in the population — although it is far from clear what this advantage might have been.
Comments
You write, "Some inherited diseases also benefit the person affected, which helps to explain why they have persisted."
In the cases mentioned, this is not correct. For example, the negative impact of sickle cell disease far outweighs any benefit that diseased individuals might derive from protection (it's protection or resistance, not "immunity") against malaria. The sickle cell mutation persists because it provides a Darwinian advantage to members of a population who carry just one copy of the mutant allele. Unfortunately, the "selfish" sickle cell mutation achieves this advantage at the expense of "sacrificing" a smaller number of children who are born with two mutant alleles.
Similarly, "the genes that underpin schizophrenia," may provide a benefit to people when they are inherited at a lower dosage. What might that advantage be? The answer could be a stronger propensity for religious or spiritual experiences that are associated with delusions and hallucinations. A belief in God-like spirits and an afterlife could reduce anxiety and, thus, provide an advantage. Polls support the notion that religious believers live longer than non-believers. Only in overdose would religion-promoting genes cause psychoses like schizophrenia.
Posted by: Lee Silver | September 5, 2007 06:31 PM
Since I'm an officially acknowledged schizophrenic, I'd like to bring in my personal view regarding sprituality and the topic. The case is the exact opposite from what Lee Silver writes, because I personally wasn't religious at all before my first psychosic outbreak and that led to lot of distress by which my psychosis was caused. It was through the psychosis that led me to deal with spirituality and by that making life less distressful and sick-making. To make that more clear I'd add that now I'm 43 years old. My psychotic outbreak was at the age of 30 (September 1994) and the last psychosis I've experienced was back in February 1998. That means that my new spiritual convictions have prevented me from becoming psychotic again for more than 9 years now, while during psychiatric treatment I had outbreaks at least once in six months in the crucial period. But it's through this process that makes spirituality more of something real, than just something you believe in like that.
Posted by: Alexander Skugor | September 6, 2007 02:18 PM
Since I'm an officially acknowledged schizophrenic, I'd like to bring in my personal view regarding sprituality and the topic. The case is the exact opposite from what Lee Silver writes, because I personally wasn't religious at all before my first psychosic outbreak and that led to lot of distress by which my psychosis was caused. It was through the psychosis that led me to deal with spirituality and by that making life less distressful and sick-making. To make that more clear I'd add that now I'm 43 years old. My psychotic outbreak was at the age of 30 (September 1994) and the last psychosis I've experienced was back in February 1998. That means that my new spiritual convictions have prevented me from becoming psychotic again for more than 9 years now, while during psychiatric treatment I had outbreaks at least once in six months in the crucial period. But it's through this process that makes spirituality more of something real, than just something you believe in like that.
Posted by: Alexander Skugor | September 6, 2007 02:29 PM
To conclude, I'd say "schizophrenia" is as much a disease as "vomiting" is a disease. So maybe some people have by genetics a more sensitive stomach and by that will be cautious of what they eat. And people with sensitive minds (schizophrenics) would have to avoid stressful environments. But sometimes that's not possible and then something like a psychosis would occur. But who could say whether it is an advantage to have a sensitive stomach or respectively a sensitive mind?
Posted by: Alexander Skugor | September 7, 2007 08:35 PM
We are not sure of many, many things about human beings but somethings are staring us in the face. We seem to want to blame our genes for everything. The fact is that most people who are labeled with the diagnoses of 'schizophrenia' have been abused and victimized by others. They are often sensitive, creative human beings who try to protect themselves from others. They often have special gifts which are not recognised and the medical 'treatment' is to chemically lobotomise them with nueroleptics( new or old)and take away their humanity, the very source they need to recover and value themselves again.
Posted by: Mary Maddock | September 8, 2007 07:45 PM
Congratulations to the researchers. This research hopefully will have some effect in reducing the terrible stigma around schizophrenia, and severe mental illness in general. Given that there is a significant overlap between the genetic basis of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, it would be interesting to see whether the finding can be replicated in other mental disorders. Just one comment: although it is tempting to assume that the evolutionary advantage will be something to do with the brain/creative thinking, this is not necessarily the case. Sickle cell anaemia protects from a parasite, diabetes from babies dying of starvation. The advantage of schizophrenia genes could be something like resistance to certain infections. There is an evolutionary race between humans and microorganisms, and we tend to forget about this when thinking about human evolution.
Posted by: Agnes Ayton | September 8, 2007 08:35 PM
Regarding the statements about "creativity" I'd say that anyone who is "creative" produces nonsense. For me art and engineering is matter of perception. An artist is good if he's able to share his genuine view of the reality. And engineering is also about recognizing possibilities that reality offers. But we can never construct/create something with no regard to reality. The link to the psychosis phenomenon would be that we come to a point where the persons view of reality isn't suitable any more and needs to be replaced by another view. So this kind of wiping out the old view is like vomiting and then from the broken pieces the person would have to "puzzle" a new picture (the spiritual term for such pictures is "mandala").
Posted by: Alexander Skugor | September 10, 2007 11:19 AM
To conclude that, I think creativity has mainly to do with lies, i.e. "inventing" perverted circumstances for selfish purposes. But that of course in same time causes a perverted perception. So I think we can only be truly "objective" if we are not selfish and that's related to psychotic "ego-death", what means that our ego is seperating us from god and in order to overcome that seperation the "ego" has to die.
Posted by: Alexander Skugor | September 10, 2007 12:18 PM
Anybody who has ever worked in a large organisation will know that being profoundly deluded is no barrier to success. In my experience the only people who doubt this fact are those who have risen to very enior positions.
Moreove, throughout history that profoundly deluded people have the ability to exert a huge influence over millions of people.
The examples are too numerous and too obvious to cite.
Posted by: Stuart Wilson | September 11, 2007 10:51 AM
Three /four things:
1)I completely agree with Stuart Wilson. I think that, for instance, somebody who is somehow afraid of others may have, in certain environments, a clear advantage over a more confident individual, for the first will try harder to take control of the situation and get rid of potential rivals. I guess this would confer an evolutionary advantage to such individuals provided that they were “healthy” enough for being able to collaborate and lobby together to a certain extent. This hypothesis would explain a lot about the structure of power in contemporary world ;-) The same would apply to moral values which can constitute a burden in the way to “success”. In that way, a moderately paranoiac guy with no qualms, but able to get the support of others, would be the fittest of the fittest, except in environments in which those characteristics were “explicitly” submitted to negative pressure.
2)The second question is: how can be considered a “disease” a feature that provides some kind of evolutionary advantage? How can we tell what is a disease and what is not?
3)I have a friend who I suspect to be “moderately” schizophrenic and I should admit that when she is depressed she can eventually get (almost) helplessly paranoiac and irrational. However, when she is in a good mood (most of the time) she is so extremely positive, proactive and imaginative that she is a real magnet for people (apart from being very prolific). I guess, that the second factor, or a combination of both states in the right proportions, could be key to the evolutionary “success” of schizophrenia.
Posted by: Ignacio Margall | September 11, 2007 12:16 PM
I think one of the problems in such discussions is, that there is no unique definition of "schizophrenia". When someone uses this word, then the other person would understand something completly different and that's very confusing. One could say, that people are "schizophrenic" when they're "false"/hypocrite, i.e. kind of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but the "scientific" definition is exactly the opposite, i.e. someone is sick and dangerous, when he starts to "be" authentic and not "controled" any more. And so those who are in power hold also the definition of what is "sick/schizophrenic" from their perspective in order to maintain "control".
Here's a link about such a confusion:
http://www.antipsychiatry.org/schizoph.htm
But the genes we're discussing now are related to ones loss of ?self?-control which is rather an attempt to gain control over oneself from being controled by others.
Posted by: Alexander Skugor | September 11, 2007 01:40 PM
The research on genetic schizophrenia is fascinating but as I have a sister who was diagnosed twenty years ago & there is no genetic link in our family I don't take this too seriously. As for creativity we can all be creative it's a matter of being encouraged in our formative years & some are better than others.
Posted by: Dorothy Carroll | September 11, 2007 04:59 PM
As far as I've understood this genetic study, it doesn't say that anyone who has such genes will become "schizophrenic", but all of those diagnosed "schizophrenic" would have such genes. So there are a lot of such "successful" genes around that could "potentially" ?cause? so called schizophrenia. But of course one has to take into accout the circumstances under which such things happen. As I've already stated, not anyone who vomits suffers from a "vomititis" disease and not anyone who has the potencial ;-) to vomit will do it in any random situation.
Posted by: Alexander Skugor | September 11, 2007 05:43 PM
To conclude that, I think creativity has mainly to do with lies, i.e. "inventing" perverted circumstances for selfish purposes. But that of course in same time causes a perverted perception. So I think we can only be truly "objective" if we are not selfish and that's related to psychotic "ego-death", what means that our ego is seperating us from god and in order to overcome that seperation the "ego" has to die.
Posted by: 中港包車 | September 12, 2007 07:24 AM
Now the problem is, that from a spiritual perspective one has to integrate the pseudo-science psychiatry into his "mandala", which is the only way to survive psychiatry. The way I've integrated it, would be to say that a lie is still better (a minor evil) to a semi-truth (half of the story). So maybe a "schizophrenic" unegoistically shares his genuine perception, but still has not the complete picture. And pychiatry would "serve" to prevent, that such an incomplete picture comes into effect?
Posted by: Alexander Skugor | September 12, 2007 01:02 PM
These researchers should read a paper by David Horrobin(1998)
"Schizophrenia: the illness that made us human" Medical Hypotheses, vol.50, pp.269-288. Genealogical and fostered twin studies show that schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and other psychoses run in families together with outstanding achievements in science, mathematics, the arts - and charismatic leadership.
Anyone with access please pass this on.
Posted by: Charles Whitehead | September 17, 2007 09:17 AM
From my perspective it's not an illness at all. It's just a temporarily "altered" visionary state of mind. So "psychosis" should be named "psy-causis", because it's all about action, reflection, cause and effect and reflecting all together. In the end it is god who makes humans out of monkeys ;-)
Posted by: Alexander Skugor | September 17, 2007 04:38 PM
The environmental pressure that selects for schizophrenia is well-described in Ariadne's Clue, a book about evolutionary psychiatry; when social groups become too large, the 'anti-social' characteristics of a schizophrenic are exactly what is needed for a leader of a break-away group. The infrequent expression of the gene provides a small pool of these necessary potential leaders.
Posted by: Robert Constable | September 19, 2007 09:53 AM
I'd distinguish between 'anti-social' and opposition against an established 'order'. I think the point is that there are two completely opposed concepts of 'social utopia'. One is a society with 'perfect rules' enforced by a parasitic control aparatus and the other is a society of 'perfect people' that don't have to be ruled at all, because they can distinguish right from wrong on their own. And that's why some people consider themselves 'realists' and others 'dreamers' ;-)
Posted by: Alexander Skugor | September 19, 2007 11:52 AM
schizophrenia is not a disease.... the only illness experienced by people unfornunate enbough to have contact with the mental health services, is distress. every body is capable of dreaming day and night. spirituality has been massive for all tribal cultures for thousands and thousands of year, it maybe that theres a sexually selected predisposition to spritual ability? ie. people who had higher spiritual abilities slept with more people... the cost of this could be that people who have these skills and find themselves raised in enviorments that lead them to feel vulnrable (i.e most of the western world) are unforntunate enough to experience distressing dreamlike states.... i dunno, i work in mental health and have a psych back ground, but this is the the kind of conclusion i'm coming to about it all. i struggle to see the diseases the medical establishment would have us believe in.. emporer cloths??
Posted by: ozzy | October 2, 2008 12:17 PM
The American scientists found that the same gene also shaped and controlled a nerve circuit closely involved with schizophrenia.
The circuit links the prefrontal cortex with another brain region, the stiatum. This affects brain fundtions that play an important role in schizophrenia, such as motivation, working memory and certain types of learning.The discovery suggests the disease might be the flip-side of an evolutionary change which in other ways helped our success by improving our intelligence.
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jerald
Manic Depression News and Discussion Forum
Posted by: jerald | February 17, 2009 06:42 AM