Burns/An evolutionary theory of schizophrenia: BBS Call for Commentators

[Behavioral & Brain Sciences]

    Below is a link to the forthcoming BBS target article

  An evolutionary theory of schizophrenia: Cortical connectivity, 
            metarepresentation and the social brain
         
                            by
 
                  Jonathan Kenneth Burns

http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Burns/Referees/

This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain
Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing Open
Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in the
biobehavioral and cognitive sciences.

Commentators must be BBS Associates or suggested by a BBS Associate. To be
considered as a commentator for this article, to suggest other appropriate
commentators, or for information about how to become a BBS Associate, please
reply by EMAIL within three (3) weeks to:

                     calls at bbsonline.org

The Calls are sent to 10,000 BBS Associates, so there is no expectation
(indeed, it would be calamitous) that each recipient should comment on every
occasion! Hence there is no need to reply except if you wish to comment, or
to suggest someone to comment.

If you are not a BBS Associate, please approach a current BBS Associate
(there are currently over 10,000 worldwide) who is familiar with your work to
nominate you. All past BBS authors, referees and commentators are eligible to
become BBS Associates. An electronic list of current BBS Associates is
available at this location to help you select a name:

http://www.bbsonline.org/Instructions/assoclist.html

If no current BBS Associate knows your work, please send us your Curriculum
Vitae and BBS will circulate it to appropriate Associates to ask whether they
would be prepared to nominate you. (In the meantime, your name, address and
email address will be entered into our database as an unaffiliated
investigator.)

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                           ** IMPORTANT **
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To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, it would be most
helpful if you would send us an indication of the relevant expertise you
would bring to bear on the paper, and what aspect of the paper you would
anticipate commenting upon.

(Please note that we only request expertise information in order to
simplify the selection process.)

Please DO NOT prepare a commentary until you receive a formal invitation,
indicating that it was possible to include your name on the final list,
which is constructed so as to balance areas of expertise and frequency of
prior commentaries in BBS.

To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for
this article, an electronic draft is retrievable at the URL that follows
the abstract and keywords below.

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An evolutionary theory of schizophrenia: Cortical 
connectivity, metarepresentation and the social brain

Jonathan Kenneth Burns 
University of Edinburgh

ABSTRACT: Schizophrenia is a worldwide prevalent disorder with a
multifactorial but highly genetic aetiology. A constant prevalence rate in
the face of reduced fecundity has caused some to argue that an evolutionary
advantage exists in unaffected relatives. This adaptationist approach is
critiqued and Crow's 'speciation' hypothesis is reviewed and found wanting.
In keeping with available biological and psychological evidence, an
alternative theory of the origins of this disorder is proposed. Schizophrenia
is a disorder of the social brain and exists as a costly trade off in the
evolution of complex social cognition. Paleoanthropological and comparative
primate research suggests that hominids evolved complex cortical
interconnectivity (in particular fronto-temporal and fronto-parietal
circuits) in order to regulate social cognition and the intellectual demands
of group living. I suggest that the ontogenetic mechanism underlying this
cerebral adaptation was sequential hypermorphosis and that it rendered the
hominid brain vulnerable to genetic and environmental insults. I argue that
changes in genes regulating the timing of neurodevelopment occurred, prior to
the migration of H. sapiens out of Africa 150 -100 000 years ago, giving rise
to the schizotypal spectrum. While some individuals within this spectrum may
have exhibited unusual creativity and iconoclasm, this phenotype was not
necessarily adaptive in reproductive terms. However, because the disorder
shared a common genetic basis with the evolving circuitry of the social
brain, it persisted. Thus schizophrenia emerged as a costly trade off in the
evolution of complex social cognition.

KEYWORDS: cortical connectivity, evolution, heterochrony, metarepresentation,
primates, psychiatry, schizophrenia, social brain, social cognition

http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Burns/Referees/

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                *** SUPPLEMENTARY ANNOUNCEMENT ***

(1) Call for Book Nominations for BBS Multiple Book Review

    In the past, Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS) had only been able
    to do 1-2 BBS multiple book treatments per year, because of our
    limited annual page quota. BBS's new expanded page quota will make
    it possible for us to increase the number of books we treat per
    year, so this is an excellent time for BBS Associates and
    biobehavioral/cognitive scientists in general to nominate books you
    would like to see accorded BBS multiple book review.

    (Authors may self-nominate, but books can only be selected on the
    basis of multiple nominations.) It would be very helpful if you
    indicated in what way a BBS Multiple Book Review of the book(s) you
    nominate would be useful to the field (and of course a rich list of
    potential reviewers would be the best evidence of its potential
    impact!).


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Paul Bloom - Editor
Barbara Finlay - Editor
Jeffrey Gray - Editor

Behavioral and Brain Sciences
bbs at bbsonline.org
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