Friday, August 28, 2009

bramble posted this.

“Many other symptoms of depression make sense in light of the idea that analysis must be uninterrupted. The desire for social isolation, for instance, helps the depressed person avoid situations that would require thinking about other things. Similarly, the inability to derive pleasure from sex or other activities prevents the depressed person from engaging in activities that could distract him or her from the problem. Even the loss of appetite often seen in depression could be viewed as promoting analysis because chewing and other oral activity interferes with the brain’s ability to process information.”

Depression’s Evolutionary Roots: Scientific American

The suggestion here is that depression is the cost of thinking deeply over a prolonged period of time about a subject. Our natural inclination for pleasure-seeking and stress management would have us do whatever possible to ignore problems that lack an easy and immediate solution.

An simplified example might be a group of early homo sapiens who face significant death toll every other decade due to a climate fluctuation. As a result, all the old people die. Biologically, this would not matter as long as the old people lived along enough to reproduce.

But for the prospect of humans evolving civilization, this is a catastrophe because old people in tribal societies are the sole repository of cultural knowledge.

Therefore, a group that had members who got depressed about the death of the elders and ruminated over the problem might come up with a solution, such as migrating when certain signs of a coming drought appear.

It’s an intriguing hypothesis.
Posted at 1:35pm
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Tags: psychology depression evolution
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