Chapter 13: Conclusion

Limitations on the Adaptive Value of Intelligence

As we have seen, the value of intelligence in nature may be reduced when you are deprived of parental investment, as you age, when you travel backwards through phylogeny, and when it is preferrable to rely on instinct.

I believe that the animal kingdom is filled with forms of neurodiversity comparable to the human forms discussed in this book. Each mammalian species may have multiple versions. They are out there. They just haven’t been discovered yet. We simply don’t have widely applied diagnostic protocol to evaluate intellectual differences between individual animals. I believe that once we recognize and analyze neurological variants in other animals, much light will be shed on human mental illness and human neurodiversity. However, as mentioned earlier, the human genepool probably contains many unrecognized forms of neurodiversity. Remember that disorders like autism, schizophrenia, and Tourette’s were only identified by medical science in the last 150 years.

Disorder	Date First Identified	Identifier
Intellectual Disability	1552 B.C.	Egyptian Papyrus
Anxiety	400 B.C.	Hippocrates
Depression	200 B.C.	Mesopotamian Texts
Schizophrenia	1887	Emile Kraepelin
Psychopathy	1888	J.L.A. Koch
Down Syndrome	1862	Langdon Down
Rheumatoid Arthritis	1800	Augustin Landre-Beauvais
Autism	1911	Eugene Bleuler
Tourette’s Syndrome	1885	Georges Gilles de la Tourette
Alzheimer’s	1906	Alois Alzheimer

Table 15.1: This table shows the year when each disorder discussed in this book was identified. This is not the first time the symptoms were reported, but the first time the medical diagnosis was accurately described.

Examples of When it is Adaptive to Reduce Brain Metabolism
Post Prandial Somnolence	After eating mammals become lethargic with a reduced ability for concentration
Preying Mantis	The female eats the males head during copulation possibly to ensure thrusting
Sea Squirt	When the sea squirt attaches itself to a rock it consumes parts of its nervous system
Neuroecological changes	The size of the hippocampus varies with ecological demands
Species with tiny brains such as koalas and sloths	Mammals that can get away with tiny brains, have them
Smaller brains in domesticated animals	For example, the dog brain is much smaller than the wolf brain
Human self-domestication	Reduced human brain size in the last 200,000 years
Asteroid apocalypse	Reduction in mammalian encephalization after the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs
Speigleman’s Monster	Suggests that life trends toward simplicity and this can generalize to the brain
Pregnancy Brain / Momnesia	During pregnancy women can experience brain fog as some areas of the cortex shrink and others expand temporarily
Chronic stress during pregnancy	Chronic stress during pregnancy reduces overall brain volume in mammals
Cave Fish	Blindness and diminished brain size in animals living in dark caves
Severe Early Neglect (feral children, Romanian orphanages)	Infants and children exposed to severe deprivation have reduced brain size and development
Psychosocial Short Stature	Extreme stress can severely impede growth and brain development in children
Runt of the litter	It is common for the runt of a litter to have cognitive deficits or developmental delays
Starvation	When starving, mammals reduce the metabolic rate in their brains

Table 15.2: Some of the concepts discussed in this book that suggest that it can be adaptive to reduce the mass and/or metabolic output of the brain. Some of these patterns also suggest a quantitative reproductive strategy.

Post prandial somnolence is probably an adaptation that helps us to save a little energy in our brains because we are probably not going to be hunting, foraging, or exploring for a while until we digest our meal. It is a shame that our brains are pinching pennies even though most modern humans have more than enough to eat.

Pregnancy brain. Momnesia

Under conditions of imperfect or incomplete information, the longer the backward memory span and the larger the number of related events that can be used in multiassociative search, the less uncertainty (information entropy) there is about the present state. In information theory, the length beyond which a backward memory span stops providing predictive information is known as the correlation length (Shannon, 1951; Stone, 2015). The working memory of a species can be seen as having a correlation length beyond which there is little predictive value to be had given its ecological niche. The long correlation length of the human working memory span was likely permitted by our cognitively demanding foraging style, selection for social cognition, and the supervised learning, error feedback, and large number of training examples provided by prolonged and intensive maternal investment (Reser, 2006). However, there is no reason to believe that the length or breadth of human working memory has been optimized for systemizing reality. It was probably constrained by several evolutionary factors that would not apply to computers.

Forward thinking behaviors that involve a plan with incremental steps are not likely to be successful during extreme volatility.

• Episodic, declarative and semantic memory become less important. Procedural, perceptual, priming, and implicit memory along with operant and classical conditioning become more meaningful. Bottom up becomes more important than top down.

• The animals that spent too much time, energy, and resources on cognition were outcompeted or eaten by less pensive animals.

The Value of the Evolutionary Approach to Neurodiversity

“If the evolutionary perspective is simply set aside, the data collected by psychologists and neuroscientists are likely to be grossly misinterpreted. The far-reaching implication of the evolutionary view is that models built to explain psychological and behavioral processes examine only the “noise” of the honed neural system devoted to making decisions about survival.”

Michael S Gazzaniga

If we know that mental disorders derive from genes that were naturally selected and not from the incidental, pleiotropic actions of other genes, then this will change the way we look for them and use gene therapy to amend them.

Most theories in “evolutionary medicine” have helped to elucidate the problems conceptually but have not yet done a great deal in informing medical approaches or treatment strategies. These theories have shown practical utility, for instance, in predicting and treating the evolution of pathogens in terms of virulence, resistance to antibiotics, and the subversion of a person’s immune system. However, they haven’t yet done much for genetic diseases. The “heterozygote advantage” theory of sickle cell anemia is fascinating, makes intuitive sense, and is embraced by virtually everyone, but has it really informed treatment strategies? Eventually though, understanding why certain human disorders arise in the first place should allow scientists to identify and zero in on particular cellular and molecular pathways.

I will also say that I believe in the next hundred years we will use gene editing techniques like a crispr to make children much more intelligent but. I would like to ask the genetic engineering community to consider some of the themes in this book as they draw conclusions about which allelic variation‘s to maintain and which to jettison. Some mental disorders should be fixed, others should be cherished. It’s not up to me to decide which disorders are adaptive today. It us up to all of us to determine how these conditions will be adaptive in the future.

Behavioral pharmacology and genetic engineering will be able to counter evolutionary mismatches.

Much additional work is needed to test the empirical predictions of these theories, extend their coverage, and integrate them with other theoretical models. Progress in the understanding of psychopathology and neuropathology will require quality data, valid empirical generalizations, and more well-grounded theory.

I believe that the stress cascade and the neurological aging that can lead to Alzheimer’s may have created advantages that permitted our species to overcome obstacles necessary to persist into the present day. Although the other diagnoses discussed in this book are important aspects of humanity, they may not have been as instrumental in the progression and survival of the human race.

Clearly there are two potential schools of thought. One sees mental variation that is a response to toxic stress as suboptimal. The other, does not see it as suboptimal but capable of generating profound viewpoints.

Risk Factors and Anti-Stress Factors

Because we know there are definite risk factors for stress and developmental disorder we know that there are also ameliorating factors. Supportive environments and resilience-promoting processes encountered during early life promote healthy brain development brought on by stress.

Better understanding nature’s “cognitive razor” should allow us to help mothers maximize their children’s brain health. Good mothers may inadvertently expose their children to environmental cues that trigger the “cognitive razor,” so we need to better pinpoint the risk factors. We must also look for reproducible environmental cues that indicate to the fetus to expect lots of maternal investment and a low probability of maternal mortality.

It is important to note that research has clearly established that there are factors that promote resilience. For example, pronounced early stress can result in a smaller hippocampus, but not in children who reported strong, loving bonds with their parents. Other factors that promote resilience to early stress include parental caregiving quality, environmental enrichment, social support, socioeconomic status, and many more. Some of the most important are summarized in the lists below.

Prenatal Factors Promoting Resilience to Stress

Psychological Therapy

Paced Deep Breathing Exercises

Marital relationship satisfaction

Access to healthcare

Positive Diet and lifestyle choices

Vitamins, B12 and Folate

Exercise

Social support

Socioeconomic status

Sleep hygiene

Parental education

Yoga

Meditation

Postnatal Factors Promoting Resilience to Stress

Loving, supportive interactions

Consistent and prolonged interactions

Providing the child multiple social partners

Positive social interactions

Parental warmth

Parental caregiving quality

Environmental enrichment

Sensitive parenting

Responsive parenting

Eye contact

Parental stroking and touch

Skin-to-skin contact

Prolonged breast feeding

Language exposure

Novel toys, books, and objects

Table 2.1: (Buss et al., 2012, Nolvi et al., 2023)

Maternal presence blocks HPA activation and increases oxytocin levels in infants. In turn, the presence of oxytocin prevents the negative effects of stress hormones (glucocorticoids), preserves neural development in the hippocampus, and inhibits anxiety and fear reactions by inhibiting the amygdala and supporting the prefrontal cortex. In nonhuman animals one of the best ways to increase oxytocin and support brain health is the mother licking and grooming the baby. Analogously, touching and stroking human babies has the same beneficial effect (Milgrom et al., 2010, Hardin et al., 2020, Welch et al., 2014). My advice is that the benefits of physical touch and skin-to-skin contact cannot be overestimated. Show your baby love through touch and find creative, interactive ways to soothe and stimulate them with your hands and fingers.

J. Milgrom, C. Newnham, P.J. Anderson, L.W. Doyle, A.W. Gemmill, K. Lee, et al. Early sensitivity training for parents of preterm infants: Impact on the developing brain Pediatr Res, 67 (2010), pp. 330-335

J.S. Hardin, N.A. Jones, K.D. Mize, M. Platt. Parent-training with Kangaroo Care impacts infant neurophysiological development and mother-infant neuroendocrine activity. Infant Behav Dev, 58 (2020), Article 101416

M.G. Welch, M.M. Myers, P.G. Grieve, J.R. Isler, W.P. Fifer, R. Sahni, et al.

Electroencephalographic activity of preterm infants is increased by Family Nurture Intervention: A randomized controlled trial in the NICU

Clin Neurophysiol, 125 (2014), pp. 675-684.

Other Disorders that Could Have Been Adaptive

The following three tables list other disorders that were not addressed here because they were either clearly maladaptive, or how they may have been adaptive is not obvious.

Psychological Disorders that May or May not Have Been Adaptive

Avoidant personality disorder, binge eating, delirium dissociative disorders, depersonalization (detachment from self), derealization (detachment from surroundings), excoriation (skin-picking) disorder, exhibitionistic disorder, hoarding, histrionic personality disorder, kleptomania (urge to steal), somatic / somatoform disorders (medically unexplained symptoms), pica, trichotillomania (hair pulling), insomnia (sleeplessness), narcolepsy (excessive daytime sleepiness), hypersomnolence (excessive sleeping), oppositional defiant disorder (anger), intermittent explosive disorder (aggressive), paraphilia (sexual arousal to atypical things), gender dysphoria, substance disorders, addictive disorders, social communication disorders, schizoaffective disorder, schizoid personality disorder, voyeuristic disorder, schizophreniform disorder, learning disorders, Dyscalculia (impaired math skills), Dysgraphia (writing disabilities), Dyslexia (reading difficulties),

Table 1.4 These brain disorders may have had adaptive features and further research could prove interesting.

Brain Disorders that were Likely Maladaptive

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig’s), Aphasia (language difficulties), Ataxia (failures in coordination and balance), Cerebral Palsy, Dyspraxia (coordination disorder), Dystonia (involuntary muscle contractions), Headache / Migraine, Huntington’s Disorder, Insomnia, Parkinson’s Disorder

Table 1.4 It is not clear if these brain disorders had adaptive components in the ancestral past. They should be interrogated though.

Brain Disorders that were Likely Pathological

Blindness, Brain Cancer, Brain Damage / Traumatic Brain Injury, Concussion, Deafness, Encephalitis (brain swelling), Extreme Pain, Meningitis, Paralysis, Seizure, Stroke

Table 1.5 Psychological and brain disorders that were probably not adaptive in the ancestral past. Many of these have a strong genetic component though and may have aspects that were influenced by natural selection at some point.

Other brain disorders that I believe could possibly be involved in thriftiness include: Myasthenia Gravis, Multiple Sclerosis, Muscular Dystrophy, Movement Disorders, Parkinson’s Disease, Huntington’s Disease, Spinal Muscular Atrophy, Tremors.

Our very bodies and minds are modeled after the bodies of successful dead people and are missing what would have been found in unsuccessful ones.

Some conditions that may have fascinating natural histories that probably stretch back deeply in time include, polymelia (more than the usual number of limbs), stone man syndrome (bone fusion), hypertrichosis (excessive hair growth), hyperthymesia (superior autobiographical memory), inborn analgesia (absence of pain), savant syndrome (various inexplicable talents), insensitivity to cold, urbach weithe disease (thickening of the skin), porphyria, and many others. Most of these are very rare, but that does not mean that there is not a fascinating story behind them which may or may not involve adaptive functions.

Whether these forms were adaptive in the Pleistocene (2.58 million to 11,700 years ago) or during earlier primate evolution is uncertain at this time.

Applying the “evolutionary neuropathology” perspective outlined in this book to other psychological and neurological disorders is like making new inferences about old archeological finds now that a paradigm has shifted.

Other non-medical types of diversity include creativity, handedness, alexithymia, and personality dimensions such as extroversion agreeableness conscientiousness, and neuroticism. Dyslexia, codependency, masochism (willingness to expose yourself to abuse from dominant group members or abuse yourself to appease them or get others to stop abusing you apes hitting themselves in front of their persecuters). synesthesia, Chronotypes morning larks, hummingbirds, and night owls. Worriers and warriors compt, growth hormone gigantism,

The benefits that nymphomania could potentially have for an individual are fairly clear, and would have increased the individuals reproductive prospects. It’s also pretty clear the way not everyone is a nymphomaniac because having lots of random sex could anger other group members or make it so that an individual has a baby with a less fit group member.

Hemochromatosis. Early in life the ability to absorb extra iron may allow people with the disorder to avoid iron-deficiency anemia and this may outweight the later disadvantage when, in middle age, the resulting iron deposits destroy the liver. I have acquired tinnitus and hyperacusis, I don’t think tinnitus is adaptive. Almost everyone has ringing in their ears to a certain extent I believe that hyperacusis as an adult is on an adaptive spectrum. Because it helps animals become concerned about loud noises.

A large cortex is not adaptive for an orphaned mammal for the same reason it wouldn’t be adaptive for a reptile.

Highly intelligent species evolved independently in many different lineages. octopus

The human lateral prefrontal cortex is disproportionately large, it probably helped humans to suppress reflexive responses to stimuli.

 “The struggle for existence through natural selection not only produces progressive changes, but also regressive ones.”

Korbinian Brodmann

Forebrain organization differs dramatically between the major vertebrate groups, while midbrain and hindbrain organization is highly conserved.

It seems that all mammalian orders contain at least some species that are smooth brained (lissencephalic). In our own order (primates) marmosets and other small monkeys have perfectly smooth hemispheres. The evidence strongly suggests that gyrencephalic brains evolved repeatedly in mammals.

Experts have identified and described a larger number of distinct cell groups in the higher vertebrates allowing them more specialized neurons to perform more distinct jobs. Mammals seem to have more than 250 distinct groups, birds more than 85, reptiles more than 80, sharks fewer than 50 and lampreys fewer than 30.

Animals that Specialize Have Larger Corresponding Processing Areas

The size of the neural tracts that deliver sensory inputs differs from species to species. The olfactory (smell) nerves are large in the dog and horse, small in man and monkeys, and nonexistent in the dolphin and the whale. As you would expect, in the mole the optic nerve is tiny, and the olfactory nerves are huge. This is reversed in hawks and eagles. Many mammals have better hearing and smell than humans and have larger corresponding auditory and olfactory nerves.

Aside from the nerves carrying sensory input, the brain areas that process these inputs (sensory areas) show wide variation in size as well. Blind mole rats have a superior colliculus (a subcortical nucleus involved in visual processing) that is 38 times smaller than similarly sized hamsters. Broad reviews of existing data have concluded that more “visual” species have enlarged visual cortices, and more auditorily oriented species have enlarged auditory cortices.

Essentially, animals allot more cortical space to particular functions and modalities depending on how they make their living. The surface area of somatosensory cortex corresponding to the snout of pigs is dramatically disproportionately large. This helps them rummage headfirst. Raccoons, which have extraordinarily agile paws for their order (Carnivora), have unusually large representation for their paws and forelimbs in both their sensory and motor cortices. As human, so do we.

The hippocampus tends to be larger in taxi drivers, but it is not known how much of this is genetic and how much of it is due to practice and plasticity.

Mammals are divisible into monotremes, marsupials and placentals. Monotremes, the duck-billed platypus and the echidna lay eggs and incubate them. For the most part, monotremes have the smallest cortices and placentals have the largest. Monotremes and marsupials lack a corpus callosum just like lizards. Marsupials and placentals are more closely related to each other than either is to monotremes.

The Clever Foraging Hypothesis

Foraging behavior and social complexity are thought to be two of the strongest determinants of brain size. The harder it is to find your food and impress your mate, the smarter you must be. Insect-eating bats generally have far smaller brains than those that must hunt larger more intelligent prey. They are also smaller than the bats that must search for blood, fruit, or flowers. Among primates, leaf-eating species have smaller brains than those that eat fruit (frugivores). Filter-feeding sharks and whales have smaller brains than those that pursue individual prey. The takeaway message is that species that consume foods that are hard to find or track tend to be more brainy than those that eat small and abundant foods (e.g. insects, leaves, and plankton). It seems that species tend to have big brains if they forage (or hunt) strategically whereas species will have smaller brains if they graze opportunistically. As you might have guessed large herbivores also generally have small brains for their body size.

These ideas have been elaborated on by Parker and Gibson (1977) and others and constitute the “clever foraging hypothesis.” If your lifestyle does not require a good deal of intelligence, you would be stupid not to be stupid. From an evolutionary perspective there is nothing wrong with having a small brain… if you can get away with it. A widely recognized principle in evolutionary biology, called symmorphosis states that organs and body parts should be no larger than the environment demands.

Darwin pointed out that the relative intelligence of a species depends largely on their brain size, but the intelligence of people seems to be largely independent of brain size. I have personally known people with small heads who are very clever and discerning and people with large heads that come across as lost, vacant, or confused. The largest heads on record actually belong to people with severe mental disabilities. Despite these caveats, in general, the size of the cortex can be taken as a direct correlate of total memory held in the brain. The real question is: “is what is in there important?” Harry Jerison has said that relative brain size correlates with what he called “biological intelligence” which he defined as “the capacity to construct perceptual worlds in which sensory information from various modalities is integrated as information about objects in space and time” (Jerison, 1976, p. 101).

The Clever Socializer Hypothesis

The environmental pressures on social intelligence also play a large role in the brain size of a species. Animals like toothed whales, elephants, parrots, corvids, manta rays, and hammerhead sharks are more social than closely related smaller-brained species. In most animals there is a weak but significant correlation between group size and brain size. This is partly because you don’t have to be that smart to swim in a school or fly in a swarm.

The correlation between brain size and group size is much stronger in primates. Researcher Robin Dunbar believes humans have such large brains in order to accomplish social feats. Dunbar found that the size of the neocortex in primates correlates with their group size. He thinks that larger social groups make more demands on brain processing power. An even better predictor of brain size in primates than group size is grooming clique size (Kudo & Dunbar, 2001). So, it seems that it’s not the size of the overall group but the size of the group of people that you are close to and interact with on a meaningful level.

If we were an ordinary mammal species, our brains would be about one-sixth of their present size.

It seems that demands on both foraging intelligence and social intelligence predict brain size in nature. The two are thought to involve different skill sets yet highly overlapping neural substrates. In other words, a big cortex will help you with both.

This has been referred to as “the phylogenetic scale,” “the Great Chain of Being,” and the “Scala Naturae.” British scientist George Romanes came up with a curious but elaborate scale designating a hierarchical intelligence divided up into 50 levels. He put sperm at level one, fish and human newborns on the same level, and a fifteen-month-old child at level 28. Darwinian theory did little to alter the framing of the problem of animal intelligence because the concept of a scale of animal intelligence had been around since Aristotle.

For comparison, an elephant’s hippocampus is bigger than a fist whereas ours is smaller than a finger.

Triune Brain

There are three components of the forebrain that drive outward behavior. The neocortex, the limbic system, and the basal ganglia. As you know, the neocortex is responsible for thought, and the limbic system is responsible for emotion. The basal ganglia guides the unthinking aspects of motor control: learned, mechanical, stereotyped movements.

These three formations in our brain are inherited from recent mammals, early mammals, and reptiles. These three are very different in chemistry and structure and countless generations apart. MacLean said that they constitute a hierarchy of three brains in one, a triune brain.

“Stated in popular terms, the three evolutionary formations might be imagined as three interconnected biological computers, with each having its own special intelligence, its own subjectivity, its own sense of time and space, and its own memory, motor and other functions.”

-Paul MacLean

MacLean is quoted saying that the basal ganglia in reptiles, birds, and mammals “is as much the bedrock of the forebrain as the Laurentian shield is to the North American continent.” He was one of the first to understand that the striatal complex is an area that integrates often conflicting inputs about how to move from the cortex and from subthalamic areas. It is truly where experience meets instinct.

Instead, the neomammalian, paleomammalian, and reptilian are mapped onto monkeys, rats, and reptiles respectively. The subconscious brain system (brainstem, midbrain, striatum, thalamus) that we are interested in is really reptilian (expanding 300 million years ago in reptiles), the emotional system (limbic system, hippocampus, amygdala, septal area) is really paleomammalian (originating 200 million years ago in small mammal-like reptiles called therapsids) and the conscious brain (the cerebral cortex and especially the PFC) is the neomammalian (expanding in early primates 60 million years ago).

Since MacLean’s writings many authors have pointed out holes in his work. They point to known facts and counterpoints that slightly undermine Triune Brain model. The basal ganglia is highly developed in fish and amphibians, so the “reptile brain” might just as well be called the “fish brain.” MacLean probably called it the reptilian brain because it sounded “cooler.” Also, reptiles have cortices so even some aspects of the mammalian brain exist in the reptile. It is only fair to mention though that MacLean conceded all of this in his writings. He knew about these caveats, and, for me, they don’t detract much from his model.

MacLean was interested in connecting phylogenetic and clinical forms of behavior using what is known about their forebrain mechanisms. He was interested in the “paleomentation,” or how ancient animals used to think. MacLean was convinced that the basal ganglia, a group of nuclei at the base of the forebrain involved in action selection, are instrumental in helping reptiles to regulate their master routines and subroutines. The subroutines are often small deviations in the master routines, eccentric habits carried by the animal that are not strictly genetically programmed. Learning is responsible for these. Reptiles have been shown to be capable of one-trial learning although for their behavior to be noticeably affected by learning, it usually must be reinforced multiple times.

Decerebration or Removal of the Cortex

In terrestrial vertebrates the forebrain is instrumental in the creation of spontaneous, directed behavior. The performance of this behavior is completely dependent on the rest of the neural chassis: the midbrain, hindbrain, and spinal cord. The forebrain in fish is smaller than the midbrain and if it is removed the fish will have seemingly minor deficits, but will still swim, mate, and find food. In amphibeans, the forebrain becomes larger than the midbrain and in reptiles it is significantly larger. Decerebration is the removal of the cerebral hemisphere, the most prominent part of the forebrain in mammals. Decerebration does not extinguish many behaviors in fish or amphibians. A decerebrate frog placed in a pond will swim to shore, clamber out of the water, and resume a motionless posture, until stimulated again from the outside. It will croak if its back is stroked and jump if pinched but it seems to have no will to pursue nonreflexive impulses.  In reptiles the deficits are more noticeable. They are apathetic, do not explore their environment, have no desire, lose their learned responses but have perfectly coordinated reflexes when pushed to move. All spontaneous action is annihilated, all true memories of previous experience blotted out. It exhibits no fear and will die of starvation even if surrounded by food. Rabbits “prepared” this way act similarly. Cats and dogs cannot survive the surgery unless some of the base of the forebrain (mostly the basal ganglia) is left untouched. We can assume this would be more pronounced in humans. A mostly decerebrate dog or cat is like a zombie. It can stand, walk, move, and do many complex movements but only if these movements are initiated from physically manipulating the animal’s limbs and jaws. It can urinate, deficate, and sleep. It acts as if totally blind and deaf, runs into obstacles without fear and does not noticeably learn anything about its environment. MacLean likened this state, the neural chassis without the forebrain, as similar to a vehicle without a driver. Some humans born with a rare condition called anencephaly are basically in this state. I don’t think the condition was ever adaptive, but researchers many years from now may be able to ascertain that anencephaly has an interesting story to tell.

The larger the neocortex in a mammal, the more axons it sends out to subcortical areas. Large-brained primates like us have neocortices that have strangleholds on the rest of the brain. For this reason, neocortical lesions in large-brained primates are thought to have more severe functional and behavioral consequences than the corresponding lesions in a species with smaller cortex. This idea is generally known as “functional neocorticalization” and it has become clear that humans lose most animal autonomy when the cortex is severely damaged (i.e., stuck in a vegetative state). On the other hand, lower animals can sustain irreparable cortical damage and still retain functional autonomy and even the ability to reproduce in the wild.

The neocortex can be removed from hamsters and much of the forebrain can be removed from birds and these animals seem normal in many respects. They make mistakes, they learn nothing that can be considered explicit or spatial knowledge, but they do show most of the naturally occurring behaviors typical of their species.

The parietal eye, also known as the third-eye or pineal eye is easy to spot in many lizards and frogs and also exists in some salamanders, fish, sharks and many extinct vertebrates. The suprachiasmatic nucleus creates our sleep cycle or circadian rhythm. Neurons here have internal clocks and afferents from the optic nerve and effrents to the pineal gland which uses melatonin to induce sleep. Now our pineal gland receives information from the eyes about the time of day, whereas in some reptiles the pineal gland is just under the skull at the top of the head and has photoreceptors directly responsive to light shining through the skull. Our pineal gland has migrated closer to the center of the brain but it does have remnants of photoreceptors, which don’t do much and are vestigial

The Greek word phylon is the name for a tribe or race, and the term phylogeny refers to the evolutionary history of an organism.

Your jaw is actually a modified gill bar that was manipulated into a jaw 450 million years ago in the first jawed fish. The neck is an amphibian invention. Fish do not have necks, when they want to look behind themselves, they simply turn their whole body around. Amphibian necks to be able to look around without having to move their entire body on the land, against the weight of gravity. Our dry skin came from reptiles. Sweat and fur came from early mammals and milk started as nutritious mammalian sweat. Mammary glands are modified sweat glands. The word mammal derives from the word “mammary.” In fact, the word mama is thought to be phonologically tied to the suckling action involved in mammary gland feeding. Mammals also have two sets of teeth, the young teeth for the food provided to them by momma. And then the mature set of teeth for when their head is bigger and they must eat things not already processed by mom. Frontal eyes allow primates to have depth vision because the eyes have overlapping fields of vision allowing us to see depth, claws were replaced with nails. Our furless face can communicate tons of emotional information. Our sclera are large and white allowing us to tell where other people are looking. We are built for running gruelingly long distances to outrun prey.

The Importance of Mothers

Mothers also get a fix of opiates when they groom and take care of their babies. In fact, early mammalian mothers started this popular trend millions of years ago and it has spread to us and affects the multitude of feelings that we have for our best friends.

The three cardinal behavioral developments that distinguish mammals from reptiles, is their disposition to nurse in conjunction with maternal care, maintain vocal communication for maintaining maternal-offspring contact, and play.

Reptilian mothers don’t seem to “feel” genuine love for their offspring. They probably do not have the emotional depth. Many young reptiles hide from their mothers to avoid becoming part of her next meal. The love that mother mammals have for their babies is primarily based on the action of brain chemicals.

Mammalian littermates have affinities for one another. These early ties lead them to play with each other. Playing is crucial to learning through trial and error and gives the animals the ability to try out their bodies, and engage in rambunctious but nonviolent physical activity, and fail miserably without severe consequences. Normally the most intelligent mammals play the most and some mammals never stop playing. Apes, monkeys, hyenas, dogs, and female lions all play throughout their lives. Before mating, many mammals play in a way that is indistinguishable from that of juveniles, in something very similar to human “foreplay.” Birds and reptiles, on the other hand engage in elaborate courtship rituals that seem inventive, but are mostly innate and fixed for the species. Relative to the “foreplay” shown in mammals, they are ritualized, hard-wired and stereotyped. The most intelligent birds (such as ravens, jays, and parrots) do show signs of play though.

Primates are an older order than rodents. Rodents came after dinosaurs died out and they invaded the daytime world.

Day-old human babies are distressed when they hear another baby’s cries.

There are many behavioral therapies that can treat or ameliorate developmental disorders including, biofeedback, neurofeedback, Cognitive Behavior therapy, Applied Behavioral Analysis, meditation techniques, and pharmaceuticals.

Stop smoking and vaping, reduce sugar, reduce social media.

Modern lifestyles have damaged the bonding between caregivers and infants. The lack of nurturing in early childhood may lead to emotional and psychological problems. In the last 100 years babies are often separated from their mothers at birth, placed in a crib or nursery in a separate room, deprived of breast feeding, exposed to television for entertainment without the presence of a constant caretaker. Lack of exploratory outdoor play, kept indoors in high stress environments, deprived of reciprocal vocal communication, reciprocal facial communication, in-person interactions with friends while engaging in collaborative activities, eye contact, and close physical contact which provides a model or breathing and heart rate. When a parent is not actively responding to an infant’s facial displays it can be highly stressful and causes the infant to disengage from their social surroundings. Cellphones, televisions, computers, and tablets also do not respond to children’s reactions, so being babysat by them can be detrimental. Television, social media, streaming videos and videogames are modern technologies that we never evolved to use. Excessive screen time can negatively affect motor development, attention span, socialization skills, and contribute to obesity (Carson, 2016; Hinkley et al., 2014; Mark, 2023). Excessive screen time and social media use can contribute to depression and anxiety and reduce attention span (). Instead, caregivers attention are captured by their digital screens. To activate higher order cognition involving the frontal lobes and emotional environment must be positive, reassuring, and stimulating. Because after just a few stressful incidents, the brain shifts from the high prefrontal lobes, to the low defensive, reflexive, aggressive areas. So set time limits for screen use, turn off notifications.

Implement sleep hygiene strategies by limiting exposure to bright light at night, turning down screen brightness in the evening, avoiding blue light, developing a bedtime ritual, avoiding large meals, caffeine and alcohol, reducing media consumption before bedtime, sleeping in darkness, establishing a regular bedtime and waking time each day, including weekends.

Mark, G. (2023). Attention span: A groundbreaking way to restorebalance, happiness and productivity. Toronto, Canada:Hanover Square Press

Hinkley, T., Verbestel, V., Ahrens, W., Lissner, L., Molnár, D.,Moreno, L. A., Pigeot, I., Pohlabeln, H., Reisch, L. A., Russo,P., Veidebaum, T., Tornaritis, M., Williams, G., De Henauw,S., De Bourdeaudhuij, I. (2014). Early childhood electronicmedia use as a predictor of poorer well-being: A prospectivecohort study. JAMA Pediatrics, 168(5), 485–492.

Carson, V., Tremblay, M. S., Chaput, J.-P., & Chastin, S. F.(2016). Associations between sleep duration, sedentary time,physical activity, and health indicators among Canadianchildren and youth using compositional analyses. AppliedPhysiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism, 41(6 Suppl. 3), S294–S302

It may be the case that patients are encouraged and destigmatized by hearing about the evolutionary advantages associated with their conditions. Integrating knowledge of neuroscience and evolutionary biology into cognitive behavioral therapy has been called Informed Cognitive Therapy by Mike Abrams (Abrams, 2021). Abrams proposes that therapists should provide advice on how to effectively use evolutionary advantages in modern society, which is a proposition aligned with the neurodiversity movement.

Abrams M (2021). The new CBT : clinical evolutionary psychology. San Diego, CA

Program Peace

The root cause of many of the disorders discussed here, and a contributor to most disease states in general, is stress. The table below lists just a few of the diagnoses strongly associated with stress.

Type	Disorder
Psychological	Anxiety, Depression, Narcissism, Psychopathy, Paranoia, OCD, PTSD, Bipolar, Eating Disorders, Borderline, Seasonal Affective Disorder
Neurological	Tourettes, Schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s
Medical	Metabolic syndrome, Arthritis, Asthma, Pain, Aches, Malaise, Inflammation, Diabetes,
Traits	Fear, Submissive Behavior, Dominating Behavior, Aggression, Competitiveness, Defensiveness, Impulsivity, Addictiveness

Program Peace method consists of combining diaphragmatic breathing with rehabilitative exercises. Breathing deeply, steadily, assertively and on long intervals helps to recruit the diaphragm. If you are taking full inhalations and relaxed exhalations at a rate of around six breaths per minute or less, you are breathing with your diaphragm. Breathing slowly and deeply with the diaphragm reduces your heart rate, blood pressure, and stress response.

Breathing deeply activates the respiratory diaphragm, a large muscle that sits beneath the lungs, at the bottom of the rib cage. When you inhale, the muscle contracts and lowers. When you exhale, it relaxes and raises. Deep diaphragmatic breathing is highly health promoting. To better understand it though, we must contrast it with distressed breathing.
 
When you are nervous, the diaphragm becomes stiff and tense. Its movement is limited and its contractions become more rapid. The more time you have spent being anxious, the more shallow its contractions are. Due to accumulated life stress, most people’s diaphragms are stuck in a state of partial contraction in which the range of motion has been drastically reduced. This is why it is so difficult for so many of us to breathe easy.

Breathing shallowly at short intervals is known as distressed breathing because it activates the body’s stress system. It is usually punctuated by gasps, sighs, and momentary breath-holding. It promotes fear, startling, nervousness, and chronic stress, and unfortunately, many of us do it habitually. Studies have shown that it is also linked to muscle tension throughout the body. 
 
In general, the more trauma a mammal has experienced, the more its diaphragm has become stifled and tense and the less its belly moves with each breath. Traumatized mammals switch to other muscles to support their breathing: namely, the thoracic muscles surrounding the chest. This is because they are better suited for hyperventilation and “fight or flight” mode. The truth is that most of us overuse the thoracic muscles causing us to live in a state of respiratory distress throughout the day. People can perceive it in the cadence of your voice and general demeanor and use it to make judgments about your level of competence, composure, and social standing.

 
Diaphragmatic breathing is an unlabored form of breathing seen in mammals from mice to monkeys that are resting peacefully. You can easily observe diaphragmatic movement in a sleeping infant, or a kitten or puppy lying on its side. You know the animal is breathing diaphragmatically when its belly is moving up and down. 
 
The most common advice from experts for achieving diaphragmatic breathing is to be aware of the breath and to focus on belly breathing, where the belly expands with every inhalation. The belly is free to extend when your diaphragm is relaxed and mobile. Try it during the next inhale. It can be a very helpful guideline but doesn’t fix distressed breathing at its source.
 
Much more important, in my opinion, is to use Program Peace’s four tenets of diaphragmatic breathing: Deep, long, smooth, assertive breaths.
 
Let’s start with deep breathing. This first graph illustrates the difference between shallow and deep breathing. We rarely breathe fully, and most of our breaths are usually confined to a narrow range. The diaphragm can move as much as ten centimeters, but most adults use only 1 centimeter, or 10% of this range. A very deep breath can flex through this rigidity and provide the muscles with a much-needed stretch. So as you breathe along with the bar on the left, try to breathe nearly all the way in by the end of each inhalation and all the way out by the end of each exhalation. Using the full range of the diaphragm will rehabilitate it over time.
 
That brings us to the second tenet: breathing at longer intervals. The fight-or-flight division of the nervous system exhibits reduced activity when a person extends the duration of their breaths. Studies show that following a paced breathing metronome at five breaths per minute like the one on the left side of your screen causes stress-related biological activity to plummet. Heart rate and blood pressure are reduced, as are nervous sweating and discomfort in response to threat. I believe that, done properly, paced breathing is THE most effective therapeutic intervention available and should be used outside of the clinic—by everyone—on a daily basis.
 
This bottom graph shows what it is like to extend the breath for a longer period. You are now breathing at the same rate, five seconds in and seven seconds out. The more you use a breath metronome, the more you program yourself to breathe diaphragmatically without it. If this is too slow or too fast, the Program Peace YouTube channel offers a variety of differently paced breathing rates for you to choose from. Try using it before a meeting, an interview, a negotiation, or a date, and you will be blown away by how calm and composed you feel. It is especially useful after a stressful situation because it allows you to return to a peaceful base line.
 
On to the third tenet: breathing smoothly. Everyone’s breath contains tiny distortions and discontinuities – desperate little gasps. These gasps are more noticeable when you are fearful, and some people describe them as shuddering, or catches in the breath. Your breathing shouldn’t be composed of a series of tiny gasps. You can iron these out if you focus on breathing at a slow, constant rate. Concentrate on modulating the breath so that these disturbances disappear, making the breath perfectly smooth, even, and unwavering.
 
Fourth: breathing assertively. We allow others to cause us to breathe shallowly. We often do it to be polite and friendly, but be aware that it is a submissive habit. Try not to allow others to influence your breathing to become cautious, hesitant, or shallow. To do this it helps to get over the fear that someone will see us and think we look too calm. Breathing assertively is the key to calmness and confidence. The best way to train it is to maintain diaphragmatic breathing during all social encounters. Breathe with impunity.

(It feels strange at first but becomes authentic with practice. Don’t let any outside influences interrupt your breathing pattern. 
Once you have internalized the four tenets and are breathing deeply, at long intervals, smoothly, and assertively, it will become apparent to you that the mental bonds we have with our ego, insecurities, and the social hierarchy are severed by diaphragmatic breathing.)
 
You have now completed five minutes of diaphragmatic breathing retraining. For many people, just a few cumulative hours of paced breathing can significantly reduce respiratory distress.

In this first figure you can see that before time 1, this person is breathing short, shallow breaths with a high heart rate and a high stress response. Starting at time 1, this person takes two slow, deep breaths. You can see a corresponding decrease in their heart rate and stress response. At time 2, they resume shallow breathing, causing their heart rate and stress levels to go back up.

We all want to reduce our stress response and instate deep breathing, but unfortunately we turn to maladaptive coping mechanisms to achieve this. We might use alcohol or drugs, overeat, spend money, or put other down to try and calm ourselves. All we really have to do is change our breathing.

Learning how to breathe with the diaphragm is not enough, however. We need to build it into the basic ways we carry ourselves, move through the world, and interact with others. The key to adopting confident behaviors is to train your body to feel comfortable engaging in them. You can do this by practicing diaphragmatic breathing while using confident postures and displays. This will enable you to replace your long-standing associations between assertive behavior and the stress response.

As another example, consider the involuntary placement of your eyes in social situations. Looking upward, above the eye line, is a clear dominance display. This is why most people feel very uncomfortable looking up in public. If you spend 30 seconds on a crowded street looking upward, you will likely become very self-conscious. Your breathing will become shallow and rapid, your heartbeat will speed up, and your stress level will increase. Here is what that looks like:

(It also relieves resting muscle tension freeing up muscles all over the body to be easily rehabilitated. We have gone over the first four tenets of diaphragmatic breathing, but the Program Peace system outlines four additional tenets.)

 The figure above shows relaxed breathing that is slow and deep until the person uses an optimal display starting at time 1. Using the display causes their breathing to become more shallow than usual, and you see a corresponding increase in their heart rate and stress response. This lasts until time 2 when they cease performing the display.
          
The unconscious fear of behaving dominantly keeps our body language withdrawn and timid. But there is a simple solution. If you spend a few minutes a day practicing slow, long, deep breaths from your diaphragm while looking up, then an upward gaze will stop recruiting the panicked breathing response. It will instead begin to feel natural and even occur involuntarily. You should start by practicing alone, then in public, and transition toward using it socially. Practicing for just a few minutes a day can train you to stop looking down in a few weeks. This technique can be used to make all forms of optimal body language feel comfortable and arise spontaneously.

While you are breathing with your diaphragm, your mind is calm and your muscles are relaxed. This is the perfect opportunity to engage in self-care. It provides what has been called “diaphragmatic generalization,” allowing you to desensitize yourself to ways of thinking, moving, and being that would otherwise be intimidating.

Program Peace offers over 200 different activities and exercises, all of which leverage diaphragmatic breathing to increase their efficacy. These exercises reinforce assertive behaviors, condition optimal postures, and rehabilitate areas all over your body, including the eyes, face, spine, gut, voice, and heart.
 
You can find the book on Amazon, download the app on the Google or Apple app stores, or access all of the material for free at www.programpeace.com

figure above shows data from a person who has used the Program Peace method of exposing a dominant display to diaphragmatic breathing. Despite using dominant body language from time 1 to time 2, their breathing remains slow and deep, and there is no discernable change in their stress response. Because they have calmed their body’s unconscious reaction to the display, it no longer provokes fear, guilt, or stress.

The exercises in this book will first ask you to pair assertive behavioral subroutines that you would ordinarily find unnerving with paced breathing. After isolating and treating them individually, you will be asked to combine several of them together so that you can become comfortable using many assertive nonverbal behaviors at once. For instance, we will learn to breathe deeply with a calm face, upward eyes, straight neck, and relaxed vocal posture. You will also work on dissociating optimal postures from the submissive ones that often accompany them. For example, we will isolate widening your eyes from raising your eyebrows and isolate smiling from squinting and sneering.

Your brain’s current records of how to hold your body correspond with remarkably high precision to where you think you fit in the hierarchy of your social group. Most people who want to be more assertive try to manipulate the environment by competing, conniving, or using power plays to change other people’s perceptions of them in hopes that they will gradually assume a more dominant role. Unfortunately, this is a stressful process that tends to compound their problems. Instead, Program Peace will show you how to transform yourself from the inside out.

The Program Peace method relies on established principles from the science of neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to restructure neuronal connections in response to new experiences and demands. This process underlies all learning, training, and rehabilitation (Douyon, 2019). It is always available, so you can start at any age and practice whenever you want. Another great aspect of neuroplasticity is that it makes things automatic. With time, neuroplastic changes consolidate and stabilize, making what you have learned second nature. The exercises in this book leverage neuroplasticity to optimize your composure by exposing your brain circuits for acting like a boss to the brain circuits for feeling safe. This will allow you to override your autopilot and make the habits of an alpha your default.

Even behaviors that express positive emotions have been routinely coactivated with distressed breathing over your lifetime. Smiling is the quickest way to recruit shallow breathing in most people. We will use long, deep breathing in Chapter 10 to detraumatize your smile and in Chapter 25 to detraumatize your laugh. This book will provide you with a diaphragmatic makeover, restructuring dozens of behaviors and postures, dissociating them from the fight-or-flight response, and decoupling them from distressed breathing. By now, you may be curious to find out what diaphragmatic breathing feels like, so let’s get acquainted with it using the activity below.

Neurodiverse Individuals Experience Unique Umwelts

Philosophers use the term “umwelt” to designate the self-centered world of a species or organism. Two different species might be inhabiting the same habitat but experience it completely differently because of their neurological differences. If you imagine what it would be like to be a sloth, you are modeling their umwelt. I believe you and I can do a pretty decent job of modeling it. It can be harder to try to simulate the umwelt of creatures with more exotic forms of sensory processing such as a bat which uses echolocation. Or consider the case of a tick, blind and deaf, but with photosensitive skin, an ability to track temperature gradients, and a fascinating sense of smell very different from our own. All known animals live on the same planet but experientially inhabit very different realities. We can expect the reality of a squid is highly contrastive from that of a scorpion, salamander, sea urchin, or sea lion.

I believe every individual human experiences the world differently and thus has their own sui generis umwelt. But it is also a good concept to keep in mind as we discuss neurodiversity because it should help you to empathize, understanding that people that behave differently may be doing so because their whole universe is distinctive from your own.

Adaptive Neurodiversity

I think an evolutionary view can positively affect the focus of neurodiversity advocacy. In my mind it shows that these people are not broken but instead fully functional. I also think it further establishes them on a continuum with other humans instead of painting them as aberrant. However, it is just as important to point out that any neurodiverse condition that was not adaptive is no less important or valid. Stroke victims are a case in point. All human conditions regardless of their evolutionary history have innate value.

Good relationships affect our health and our brains. Being in a securely attached relationship with another person is neuroprotective. If you feel you are in a loving relationship with someone you can count on in times of need, your memory is better. People who feel they cannot count on the people in their life experience early memory decline. Is this a simple example of the stress cascade or is there more to this phenomenon neuroecologically?

Incorporating Neurodiversity

Only in the last few decades have people been working towards finding ways to assimilate neurodiverse individuals and help them to express their potential. Many people with neurodevelopmental disabilities may not be able to support themselves financially at this point, but spiritually and intellectually they are our equals in my mind. Surely there are, yet undiscovered, ways to customize educational paths for them and help them to master domestic tasks and become knowledgeable about professional domains.

We are just now beginning to understand what kinds of lives these people can lead and how they can find outlets for their abilities. Neurodiversity advocacy will gradually document more and more success stories and surprise us with new formulas for how to excel at being human.

The definition of harmony is different types coming together. There is no equity without inclusion. We’ll be doing ourselves a favor, when we sufficiently incorporate neurodiverse people into our lives, into our conversations, and into our political discourse. There is another saying that there is no diversity without disability. And this means that if disabled people are not included, that diversity is not properly accomplished. Diversity and equity is ornamental tokenism without inclusion and access. Inclusivity.. Neurodiverse people have made major societal contributions around the world, despite or perhaps, because of their differences.

Neurodiverse Perspectives

Almost all neurotypical people spend their time thinking about the same topics. Relative to our world, ruled by the same mundane concerns, the thoughts of neurodiverse people are highly original.

People with autism pay attention to, think about, and learn from things that neurotypical people are blind to. They are building systems and narratives from things that we can’t imagine how to systemize or narrate. They are breaking reality down into patterns that are just as valid as the ones we use, but far different. This tunes their neuron’s and those neuron’s receptive fields to respond to stimuli and construct concepts that we could never comprehend.

The brains of neurodiverse people use the same fundamental information processing algorithms that neurotypical minds use. On a molecular, cellular, and circuit level, their brains are indistinguishable from ours. Their processing algorithms are only slightly different, but these differences allow them to make their own sense of the world. Individuals with severe autism are not going to benefit from many social constructions and this can result in handicaps. But in many ways these people are free from these constructions. Individuals with schizophrenia are susceptible experience the world in just a slightly re-tuned version of ours. Individuals with intellectual disabilities may not perform the same in the workplace, but their insights and opinions… At first glance, it may seem to us that the neurodiverse experience bizarre, confused, fun-house versions of reality. But remember, although the settings may be different from yours, their tuning knobs were not placed randomly. Rather, their brains were fine-tuned.

The Importance of Neurodiversity

“I am different, not less.”

Temple Grandin.

All mammal brains have two cerebral hemispheres, right and left. Do you know why your brain is made of two nearly identical halves? Because they are slightly different from each other and this difference is valuable from an information processing standpoint. In one of your hemispheres the average distance between neurons is just slightly longer and this makes it so that each has its own unique way of thinking. They each process most of the same information, but they process it differently. And because they are allowed to communicate they can share their alternate perspectives and ultimately help you see the bigger picture. Neurodiverse people, if allowed to communicate their unique perspectives, will help us see the bigger picture.

Conditions like these may be uncommon but are not unnatural. Let us continue to challenge the view that neurodevelopmental disorders are entirely pathological and reframe them as natural human variation whether naturally selected or not.

When you ask people with mental disorders, if they would choose to live without them if they could, they often report that they would prefer to keep them. And sometimes this is because it has become a part of their identity, but other times it’s because they wouldn’t want to give up the advantages.

These disorders are present in all of us. We all fail to notice social cues, become deluded, have misperceptions, feel sad and anxious, act immature, and betray people without shame or regret. 

We all have neurological and psychological strengths and weaknesses. In the future, we will be able to assess peoples’ strengths better. A tremendous assortment of neurodiverse strengths will be uncovered. If you judge an eagle by its ability to swim underwater, how can it be expected to live up to its potential?

Everyone is on the autism spectrum. There are so many genes associated with it and we all carry some of these genes. Everyone is somewhere on the continuum. This is also true for intellectual disability. We all have genes that influence us toward and away from schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s, obesity, and . There is no down syndrome, continuum, because down syndrome is an all or none chromosomal event. but there is a continuum of proclivity to having a child with down syndrome.

Even very intellectually gifted people are much closer to being disabled than they realize. AI will show us this soon. Two SD below is very close to 2 SD above. We will be humbled by AI and will see that we are all much closer than we realized. Emergent abilities don’t seize in the minds of intellectually disabled people but we all have the same base abilities and level of consciousness.

We have natural selection to thank for our cognitive and neurodiversity. The process by which, in Darwin‘s words, “from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.”